Marketing Issue [RE-wrenches]

[William Korthof]

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So...

In a competitive environment where customers can (and do)
shop around, why not mark up the equipment prices less,
and charge more for labor, design, and installation services?

Sales tax is proportional to equipment cost; mark up the
equipment less and the sales tax decreases. As long as you
adequately charge for the service/design/installation services,
if should be fine if they choose to buy from the online zippy
discount circus, or Home P, (or whatever). Or conversely, if
the customer wants want to DIY and buy from you without
design help, why not set the prices so that also isn't problem.

I'm perfectly happy to let customers hassle with buying,
shipping/ unloading/ financing solar panels, inverters, and
batteries. But funny thing...they rarely seem go that route.
On the other hand, our market is nearly all grid-tie home
systems at 3-12 kW with substantial rebates.


William Korthof




At 08:52 AM 5/15/03 -0700, you wrote:
>Kurt and David,
>
>This is probably not the place to trash Homepower (all things considered!)
>for their marketing policies, but I agree with you completely. I don't
>believe that turning your customers on to HP is a very wise move if you
>actually plan on selling them something.
>
>HP has very nicely done articles and editorials that seem to be primarily
>targeted toward the do-it-yer-selfer, which dovetails nicely with the
>plethora of ads from the McSolar guys in the mag. If your intent is to offer
>in-depth technical information without the unwanted written SPAM, probably
>the best technical publications available are Photons (Germany), and Solar
>Today. Both publications are nearly devoid of ads from the Solar Trolls.

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