Parallax Super Carrier Board: Would you buy more at a lower price?

Ken Gracey

Hey Stampers,

Doing a bit of marketing research today and I'm not afraid to ask you some questions. One of my favorite products is the Super Carrier Board:

http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=27130

It's a great permanent place for BS1/BS2 projects. It's fairly expensive to our customers at $49.00 each and we should be selling many more. I suspect the high price is the problem here. Therefore, we'd like to do the right thing for you (and Parallax) and make these boards more accessible with a lower price. Pricing the Super Carrier Board isn't like selling gasoline, so I respectfully ask for your input before we make this change.

Sincerely,

Ken Gracey
Parallax, Inc.

steve_b

Due to the import charges and exchange rates....my answer will be biased as $49us is a down payment on a new dogsled up here in Canada (and it's nearly 3cases of Canadian beer -- which is about 4cases of American beer....which makes up the difference in exchange rates!)

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Steve
http://ca.geocities.com/steve.brady@rogers.com/index.html
"Inside each and every one of us is our one, true authentic swing. Something we was born with. Something that's ours and ours alone. Something that can't be learned... something that's got to be remembered."

allanlane5

Yes, with the carrier board and a Stamp, today you have a $100 solution -- too much. The Stamp costs $50, then the BOARD costs another $50?

If that solution was $70, it's a much better deal. I would not balk at paying $19 for the board, plug, regulator, capacitors. For that price, I'd buy three. That way, I could build projects, leave them built, and switch the BS2 around. If a project really 'worked' well, I could dedicate a BS2 to that project and buy another to swap around.

And $20 is a nice price point, especially with the parts already integrated. It would cost me $25 to have a board built in small quantities.· $10 would be ridiculously low, $15 low but do-able.· $25 would be on the high side.· No, at $19 I think you've hit the perfect price.


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Mike Cook

Make it a kit (user mounts the components) sell for $24.95

or

Make the BS2 homework board available for purchase in singles for $49.95

Ken Gracey

Okay, we're going to do what Allan and our voting poll suggested. We'll permanently lower the price to $19.95. And Steve will have enough for a new dogsled.

Mike, for kicks you should know that it actually costs us more to make a kit than to provide the assembled product.

Please give me a day or two to make the price reduction.

Sincerely,

Ken Gracey
Parallax, Inc.

Ryan Clarke

Excellent!

With those and the new SX carriers, I'm going to be broke in no time! [noparse]:)[/noparse]

Ryan

Philip Gamblin

Naturally everybody likes it cheaper, myself included.·Since you guys are in the giving mood, I might as well ask. How about kitting up the BS2 OEM ( with a slightly modified ) supercarrier board at the $40 to $50 range. I think that would be an excellent value.

allanlane5

Yes, I was going to suggest selling the bare board, along with a kit of parts, but I kind-of thought it would be cheaper for you to sell them already built.

Ken Gracey

Philip,

We have a stack of design projects in progress right now, so I can't make that idea happen. The newbie to Parallax is overwhelmed with options already. I concur that more solutions are beneficial, but you can have a Super Carrier with a BS2 module for $79 in a couple of days.

Ken Gracey
Parallax, Inc.

Philip Gamblin

That is very cool. It is my disadvantage that my background is ham radio. As such, I am notoriously cheap, much preferring sweat equity to cold cash. Being a 40 odd year old father of two both cash and time are significantly limited, but when pressed, time is easier to come by. You guys should be proud of Parallax. Great products, good pricing and your customer support is simply nothing short of outstanding. This forum alone has saved me countless hours. I am constanly picking up great tips on programming and hardware interfacing. You guys rock! Thanks for all your help.

Ken Gracey

Hello Stampers,

At your request, our Super Carrier board is now only $19.95, cut $30.00 from the prior price of $49.95! It appears on our home page as a "sale" but if volume is higher we'll make this a permanent change. Get yours today at:

http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=27130

And we've just ordered another production run to be sure we don't run out of stock. Though I'm sure we'll run out of stock (my fault) because we launched the marketing fun long before we planned more production. Some things I never learn. . .

Sincerely,

Ken Gracey
Parallax, Inc.


Post Edited (Ken Gracey (Parallax)) : 5/18/2005 5:11:31 PM GMT

allanlane5

I just ordered 2, along with a few app-mods to use with them. I just realized this may also solve my Javelin problem -- which is that the Javelin 'built-in' port is for Debug, and is awkward to use as a general purpose RS-232 port. Add one app-mod to the new in-expensive Super Carrier, and you are good to go.

Peter Verkaik

Allan,
Visit the thread
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=527910
for a program that allows you to use the Javelin Sout pin
for debugging purposes.
regards peter

allanlane5

Yup, saw that thread, and it's really neat -- unless you want a Javelin to actually recieve and send data out a second serial port, as I do. The Javelin development board (which I didn't purchase) does have the second port. With the Super Carrier and app-mod, I have the two ports no problem.

But thanks for the heads up about the protocol.