Not getting that message, or simply not caring about that message?
Might I suggest perhaps diversifying your marketing efforts a bit and not relying so heavily on a bunch of wankers on audio forums?
You know, actually, that's the holy grail around here. I go to CES and CEDIA; I look at competitors, and I ponder the field, and I try to work out exactly what it would take to diversify our "online" business into an offline environment. I haven't figured it out yet, and might not ever.
Without telling the whole story (I'm not going to spill all my "trade secrets"), suffice it to say that the very things that make us competitive in the online world are something of an albatross elsewhere. For example, margins: on many cables, we build everything from stock product, and although we get better pricing than the average man on the street, we don't really get MUCH better pricing. What this means is that our prices are constrained by the fact that anybody who wants to go into business tomorrow building component video cables out of Belden 1694A can do so; and if we price it too high, they will. That's fine, until you ask, "how do I put this product in distribution?" At that point, what becomes very clear is that the only way to do it, at least under our existing branding, is to raise prices substantially, so that we can sell to distributors at something slightly lower than our current prices, and they can sell at retail without being undercut by us. But to do so is very much a case of buying a pig in a poke; we would immediately suffer dramatic loss of our existing market, and there is no assurance that we would actually win any of that reseller market we'd be doing it for.
We may figure it out someday; but right now, it's the Gordian knot, and all I have is a butter knife.
The online market has generally trended toward lower and lower pricing. We have always liked to think that we represent, in some respect, the high point of that trend in the sense that we represent relatively low pricing for goods of broadcast quality. You can spend more and get less, or spend less and get less, but it's hard to get more at any price. But what we have seen is that the drive toward low pricing is relentless, and is only partially hitched to the quality of product. That would be untroubling were it not for the fact that internet marketing is enormously customer-driven. People who preceded us into this internet custom cable business have in some cases gone from prominent to falling-off-the-map just because they lost their prominence in the ongoing online discussion.
I haven't dug into the design patents to compare with the RCAs you're using on the Tartans, but the sad fact of the matter is that ultimately, it doesn't really matter. Right or wrong, Monster Cable is in a position to drain you of resources you quite likely can't afford.
Actually, I very much disagree. My long acquaintance with litigation included a lot of time representing small litigants against large ones, and a lot of time representing large litigants against small ones. There are advantages to large size, and there are advantages to small size. If large litigants always have the advantage, how come there are so many successful plaintiffs' personal injury lawyers? They are almost always representing the little guy against the big guy. The fact is that size makes it harder to control the facts; it makes it harder to know what your own witnesses will say; it makes it more burdensome to comply with discovery requests; and it exposes you to liability on more fronts than you can really be aware of at the outset.
Where smaller litigants often suffer is that they don't know who to go to for help, and they do not understand the litigation process or the considerations that control the merits of the claims well enough to really properly integrate their strategy with their circumstances. Litigation is precision work, but a lot of it is done in a slapdash fashion, both by large and small litigants, and a lot of it is done without due consideration for overarching strategy and for thematic development of a claim or defense. A lot of lawyers, sad to say, are inattentive to the law and allow issues to go to trial which they should win on dispositive motions; I could not count the number of times that I filed a motion for summary judgment and a colleague would say, "isn't that an issue of fact?" without even knowing anything about the case--as though certain types of claims were always destined for trial regardless of the state of the record. Hogwash, I say; meritless claims or defenses can often be cut short, whether the plaintiff is big or small.
One of the defining characteristics of my practice was that I won cases nobody thought could be won at all--cases which my client had spent a long time trying to find a lawyer to even listen to--and I won them, in many cases, on summary judgment, without taking the case to trial. On a few occasions, I won summary judgment for plaintiffs in civil rights cases--something I have never known anyone else to do, and which many of my colleagues considered an intrinsically absurd idea. One of my fondest memories is of a hearing some years back; opposing counsel, after oral argument on my plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment before a U.S. District Judge had concluded, said loudly to his client (intending, I think, that I hear it): "the judge will NEVER grant this motion." Three days later, the judge did, and a few weeks later I had a check in hand and a settlement agreement granting me everything I'd sued for.
Anyway, now I sound like I am bragging, which is not to the point. What I really mean is this: the main thing that makes litigation easier, or harder, is the merits. If you have a good claim and good counsel, it's very hard for anyone to beat you into submission. If you have a lousy claim and good counsel, the most you can be reasonably assured of is that your counsel will make your opponent's course more difficult than it ought to have been; and I have beaten up people who had excellent counsel and lousy claims or defenses time and time again. Try to mug me, and I may mug you back.
Kurt
Blue Jeans Cable
