oldfart
Elite Veteran
Location: Vancouver, Canada
| Yes Willie, I hear ya. Of course the statement at the start of this thread, "...get your order in and the machine in your hands before the dealers get the Kits." did disturb me....very much so. In fact, I thought it was a marketing gaff extraordinaire. As you said, it is a slight to the Century dealer network....and that is something that I have taken up with them.
But really, it seems this thread is about what the Swift 620E has to offer as a heli, and not Century's marketing strategy.
Century could also pay the costs of having a herd of Hot Sticks pimping their stuff. This would definitely get them more of a halo and would allow them to charge a lot more for their kits (as they would have to, just to pay the costs of these Hot Sticks). Just NOTE the difference in price between the new Raven and the Trex600NPRO. If one purchased the T600NPro along with a set of the blades that come with the Raven 50, its' price would be about $650...the Raven is less then half of that...$300.00.
Some are willing to pay the extra to feel like they are "hangin' with the Hot Sticks"....others would rather not spend money for that feature....specially when one figures how much that feature really costs.
There is no doubt that the T600NPro is a very worthy 50, but so are many others that cost a lot less. I agree that the others will not be as publicly popular, but IMHO, that has a lot more to do with the pimping by the Hot Sticks, then the real merit of the heli itself.
I have been flying these things since 1985, and have seen a lot of different helis evolve and always analysed the helis on the merits of their flight systems and design....not by who was flying them.
I have also, in that time, seen a lot of market developments evolve that I didn't even think would do what they have done (e.g. the extra money/margins a manufacturer could make from using hot sticks to create a "bullish" demand - I thought that was only possible in the penny stock market  ).
I guess I didn't think so many people spent their hard earned cash "buying into something" rather then "buying something". But there is no doubt about it, Align and some others are proving there are more of the former then the latter.
So maybe Century should try to go somewhere in between  |
Century has made some Poor decisions and this is one of them as the customers that buy one of these machines may find parts hard to get or from only a few supplier's, they were better off over hyping the machines, I look on the For sale board ALL Century products have to be given away to be sold, that in its self is saying something.
