Message me your address and I’ll buy you this book. Just go straight to part about supply and demand, equilibrium price. It’ll answer your question. Then throw the book away.
I’m not insulting you by any means. I love the For Dummies books. I have a number of them and read them myself. It’s just a baseline explanation of everything. The last one I read was Penny Stocks for Dummies no more than a month ago.
Anyway, with a business background like yours I’m sure you priced things at what the market was saying was on or near the max price at least 66% (middle 2/3rd of the bell curve) of customers were willing to pay, right?
That’s why the surface cleaners are priced as they are.
Higher quality, more expensive surface cleaners are priced in a manner that the end of the bell curve, upper 16.6% or final 1/6th of consumers will purchase it.
Again, I try to be as helpful as I can be here with as many people as possible. What goes around comes around, right? I sincerely did not post that particular book as an insult.
I see a $600(19 inch eagle wash) purchase that lasts 10 years and profits are about 10 times the initial purchase price annually a decent investment. So much so that I have 7 or 8 of them. I didn’t even have to read the dummy book lol. I’ve talked to John at Whisper wash extensively about their products, offered suggestions and been asked for input. I don’t know, but from the products used I would guess their is around $300 in the final product. Barrons, Pressuretek or whoever makes $45 to $50 on the sale so Whisper wash makes a hundred bucks of their product. Not even sure if this answers your question as I can’t follow your line of thought.
I don’t do driveways. It costs me $2.40 a minute based on a 40 hour week to break even. Anything over that is profit, more or less. If i did the driveway and made $2.41 a minute I profited. If they made me $30 bucks profit for the 30 minute job and the other crews were making the same I’m making profit and not really caring that they are using surface cleaners that were paid for a decade ago
This is a weird thread. Who cares, buy what you want. Does it really cost BMW 3 times in parts and labor over a Camry. But personally I rather drive a BMW. I happy that Whisper Wash makes a nice profit. Keeps people employed, has great quality and they can pay their taxes. I don’t care if they build the damn thing for $25, it works well and I like it.
I mean, I think I understand the point he is making, which is that there aren’t a whole lot of parts to a surface cleaner, like there are in engines. On the surface (pun intended), it seems crazy to pay $800 for a swivel, handle, and some plastic around it.
However, as im sure Mr xlr8tion knows, research and development gets baked into the cost. Sure, it might not take a lot of expensive parts to manufacture now, but it took time, money, and work to get to this point.
Go buy a $200 SC from northern tool, and a whisper wash classic. Use both side by side every day for 6 months. I imagine it wouldn’t take long to figure out the extra cash is worth it, and probably even cheaper in the long run.
Firstly @ Squidskc…thanks for your kind words and explanation…no foul no harm. In 98, when we were acquired , we did 16 million in gross revenues with a net profit of $640k. That’s the competitive nature of Home Health Care- a 24/7/365 business.
So I come from a high volume low profit margin background where 4 to 6 per cent profitability was the norm unless you were screwing the government via Medicare fraud.
So this business is a flip side paradigm as Whisper Wash (I read the David French story) has nine employees and his profit margins are most likely 10 x what mine were.
I am not sure it’s a supply vs demand issue as Mr. French would simply scale up production.
I think it is in the marketing and the fact they make better SCs than the big guys like GP and BE and are trying to stay novel with their products.
It’s just a bit of an initial shock as you have posters coming in heavy handed with how many of these they have and how much money they are pulling down. This business is more lucrative, Pressure Washing, than any other I have seen and that’s fantastic.
What we all have to remember is when we started out. I could easily afford to construct a 30k trailer and recoup my investment in months.
What I am alluding to is Mr. French has a marketing degree from Clemson, knows the TAM, the profit margins of his clients and prices accordingly.
No offense is meant by this post…Just an analysis of his price structure. It is not demand outstripping supply- he would make more. It is a quality product and the human psyche syncs with the notion that if it costs more it must be better. That applies from Windex to Whisper Wash…
P.S. Thanks @Tireshark…that’s my gist of the topic. @Sharpe…not cynical…analytical…10 days in 700 is a lot…10 years out not…Thanks!
don’t know the answer on price difference other than they probably sell less of them. The last 16" eagle I bought was a couple of years ago but it had the new swivel. The eagle/ultra is far better than the whisper wash, to me, due to the fact you can plug your trigger gun straight into it without have to mess with a ball valve and deal with the built in handle of the whisper wash. Use the 4 nozzle bar and sleeve protectors, add an elbow at the swivel so the pressure of the water hammer keeps it seated on the ground and they are unbeatable.
I definitely will get one of the UCs…I just need to decide whether to get the 16 or 19 as I have a GX390 with a new AR RRV4G/4000psi pump. I know the 19 has a 17" arm so I may be close close to the 4"/gal rule if the AR measures out better than the woeful FNA AAA pump it replaced.
To me the 19 inch is a steal for the extra 50 over the 16…499 vs 445.
depends on your needs. 19inch you can get the 4 bar nozzle and your right, it is actually 17. I have both and run them with 8 gpm machines. Only concrete I clean is inside apartment breezeways and occasional sidewalks so the small ones work fine for me.