BMG vs clone test
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My last business venture before I retired was designing and building garden decks. Being a "one man band" with my business premises consisting of an office in a spare bedroom and no other staff to pay wages to, my overheads were a lot lower than larger companies. But I would often get undercut on price and on average I landed about 1 job for every 3 quotations that I submitted. Not that it bothered me because I was always booked at least 3-6 months ahead and a lot of people didn't want to wait that long.
People would often say that they had a cheaper quote and sometimes ask if I could match it. My reply was always the same......
"Sure I can, getting the price down is the easiest thing in the world. I can use budget decking which is 22mm thick, and made out of Scotch Pine which doesn't come with any guarantee, rather than the 33mm thick premium decking made from Scandinavian Redwood which comes with a 25 year guarantee against rot or insect infestation. That will save £nnn. Or I can use plain rough sawn timber for the frame and posts rather than PAR tanalised timber and not bother treating the cut ends. That will save another £nnn. Again, that doesn't have any guarantee and will likely rot after 5 years or so, whereas the tanalised framing timber comes with the same 25 year guarantee. Or I can wack it all together with a nail gun rather than fixing it with exterior grade or stainless steel steel screws. That will save another £nnn but the nails will likley spring as the timber expands and contracts, and those that don't will rust away so the deck will warp and twist before it falls apart completely in a few years time. Or I can not bother with the heavy duty weed suppression fabric. That will save another £nnn. etc etc. Which of those options would you like me to amend the quote for?"
Funnily enough, they invariably ended up going with the original quote.
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@deckingman, from the way you describe it, it seems that you didn't really want to let the customers to decide and made the decision for them. Smart customers can easily pick these vibes.
Every market has a room for products at different price/quality/performance, including the UK decking market and the desktop 3D printing market.
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@zapta It's true that I would try my best to explain to customers that cheap materials would shorten the life of their deck to one fifth of what it could otherwise be and cost them more money in the longer term. It made no financial difference to me because the labour cost was the same, so my profit was the same regardless of the quality of the materials.
For sure, many customers went the cheap route (with a different supplier) and of course, that was their choice. But I didn't mind because much of my business was replacing decks that had been built cheaply. So I knew that I would likely get the work in a few years time. But that would cost the customer more in the long term so I felt I had a duty to point that out.
Interestingly, competitors used to come and go. Most would be gone within a year of starting up. Probably because it's difficult to make a living when you spend half the time going back to rectify previous f**k ups. Whereas I was always booked for at least 3 to 6 months and always had more work than I could handle. -
@deckingman I had always wondered about your handle!
We are in the process of rebuilding the deck we tore out from our house. It not only rotted away into a hazard in under ten years since the previous owner built it, it took the sill beam where they’d attached it (with no flashing) with it. Great fun!
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@whopping-pochard said in BMG vs clone test:
@deckingman I had always wondered about your handle!
We are in the process of rebuilding the deck we tore out from our house. It not only rotted away into a hazard in under ten years since the previous owner built it, it took the sill beam where they’d attached it (with no flashing) with it. Great fun!
Yes, it's a long story - that was career number 7 (or 8 ) but I'm an engineer by training. Feel free to PM me if you need any advice.
For info, I never used to attach anything to existing structures. If the deck needed to abut a wall, I made it so the frame would finish about 100mm away from the wall (the deck would be supported on posts set onto concrete pads). Then the deck planks would extend up to but not quite touching the wall (about a 3-5mm gap between the deck planks and the wall). So plenty of room for air to circulate and no chance of water getting trapped between any timber and an existing structure. A slight fall away from the wall, ensured that there was no possibility of damp ingress into the wall from the deck (we get a lot of rain in this part of the world). -
i bought a titan clone off amazon. when i assembled it i was like, do they even know what this thing is supposed to be doing. I got my money back without much fuss and got to keep the useless titan.
i ended up printing a new cases for it and was able to use the gears.lately the quality coming from china has increases in quality by a lot. i.e the skr boards are really good boards.
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@Veti said in BMG vs clone test:
china has increases in quality by a lot...
They work their way up the quality ladder as the Japanese and the South Koreans did. After WWII Japanese products were considered cheap junk and then the Korean. Now they are recognized for quality in many areas.
China's population is ~1B and has an average IQ higher than any European or North/South American country.
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@zapta said in BMG vs clone test:
@Veti said in BMG vs clone test:
china has increases in quality by a lot...
China's population is ~1B and has an average IQ higher than any European or North/South American country.
Are you a member of the Chinese Communist Party by any chance ? I only ask because how else could you come by the data to back up that claim?
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@deckingman, from here
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/china-population/
and here
https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php
Not a communist and no affiliation with China. Au contraire.
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@zapta So you are using studies which are based on data supplied by those countries. Independent bodies aren't allowed to do studies like that in China. How do you think the data was collected? For your statement to be true ( quote - "has an average IQ higher than any European or North/South American country"), then the entire population of those countries would need to have undertaken the same interdependently verified IQ test. We know that isn't the case so a sample of the population must have been tested. Who decides who those participants will be in an authoritarian communist state? Would the CCP ensure that the sample includes a representative proportion of say poor farmers and fishermen, or would they elect to only pick participants from among those in higher education? The former would be fair but the latter would show China in a better light.
If a selected participant turned out to be particularly thick, do you really believe that result would be included? Most likely it would be "manipulated" in a similar fashion which ensures that no student admitted to higher education can fail. It is an edict from the CCP that no student can fail. If a student were to fail, then a tutor or administrator would "disappear". So either the student's results get manipulated or the student himself/herself disappears and their records are eradicated to show that they never attended higher education. That's how things work in Communist states.
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This is not what this forum is here to discuss. Locked.
