Hello Tanoo and Nat, good afternoon.
How are you doing? Thank you once again for your time on my visit last week. I would like to provide a quick recap on our meeting:
First of all, I must congratulate your dad’s retirement, he deserves it and I hope he and your mom will have wonderful retirement life. I have seen you are not copying mail to him anymore, so I won’t disturb them, please kindly send my best regards to them.
Having said that, responsibility falls into your hand together with Nat whom acts as the managing director, I hope we can work together proactively and smoothly on the Dahle products. I must say, as mentioned during our meeting, the sales turnover wise is not encouraging at the moment, we have not received any order in 2015 while I have been told that 35 Marketing still have enough stocks. There is a good chance that we will not meet last year numbers. What’d actually happened? You must find answers, maybe this is a transition period in which you have to pick up your dad’s business relationship, network and overall operation, I can live with that but my question is how long would it take before we will go back to the tracks?
Understand that the overall economic situation have not improved from the change of political regime last year, however we must find new ideals and channels to grow the shredders market, I can say we still have many room to grow as Dahle’s brand, or product exposure is not strong in Thailand, are you two up for the challenge?
You are saying the demand for cross cut is minimum in which I must say I would not agree 100%. Creatus, Easton Pioneer and Neopost are selling all kind of cross cut machines in a much larger volume, cross cut machines can be found easily on Thailand webpages, if they can’t be sold, I do not see the reason why they are published even more often than the strip cut machines. As spoke, we can’t rely only on existing customers, and we must need to locate dealers who are able to sell cross cut machines. 35 Marketing is our long arms to the Thai market, we don’t speak the language, we are depending on you on the local operation and representation.
When you raise out the possible contributions from Dahle on marketing like exhibitions, I would say Yes and No. If we look at the sales figures, it is simply not convincing, in the past 3 years with turnover at 32k, 9k and 23K for 2012 to 2014 respectively. Please provide us more information on the exhibition you are planning to exhibit, what kind of prospect dealers are you expecting to meet, covering from which major cities and would it make business sense to invest for such an event? You must study, analysis and anticipate what are the possible outcomes from the event. By all means we would like to help and support, but please kindly understand we need supporting in applying the budget from the management. I could see a FOC demo machine and some marketing materials (banner, catalogues, etc) as our reasonable offer for an exhibition.
During our visit, I introduced the new 50 MHP series in which I would like to get your support in the near future. Once again, this shredder gives you higher sheet capacity compared to the equivalent models in 40 series, no oiling maintenance, new patented cutting mechanism in which materials are conserved during the production process while the teeth on the cutters are sharper which results better paper handling (ie. straight feeding). Before you can move this series, you must need to locate more cross cut end users.
Last but not least, as promised I will provide some details on my short meeting with Santichai at my hotel.
To be fair on his part, he is NOT complaining 35 Marketing but Santichai wants to deal directly with Germany for the following reasons:
1. Pricing (he did mention he was not getting pricing support from you earlier this year for a much smaller project, at the end he used HSM instead)
2. He does not want to disclose his customer base to 35 Marketing (ie. ask you to repair the machine on site). To me, this is a matter of trust, I do not know what had happened in the past, but this is something you and Nat might figure out in future why the local dealers have such thoughts.
3. Having said the above, Santachai is more efficiency in dealing with the end users when it comes to repairs when he can get access to the spare parts from Germany. I was told that he will lose warranty from 35 Marketing if he services the machine by himself.
On my part, I must be fair to everybody, explained things can be negotiated down the road, on one side, I must protect your interests as a long term partner, I explained the following facts to Santichai:
1. Getting direct from Germany doesn’t mean he will get a better pricing, we have different pricing structure, it might be even more expensive for him to buy from Germany than 35 Marketing at the start.
2. Open to facts, ideas and do not make a rush decision, Santichai has many things to consider in becoming a Dahle distributor such as experience on importation, financially capability, warehouse spacing, technical capability, marketing and sales plan etc.
3. As a matter of fact, he has the options to keep buying from 35 Marketing (in this case both of your parties have to work out and compromise on your indifference), he knows Nandee, maybe he will contact Araya for cooperating possibility, and if and only if he decides to come back to us with a detailed sales plan and target , he has the right in doing so, we will evaluate the case if we reach that far. I mean, if Santichai commits 10 machines per year to Dahle in becoming a distributor, what is the whole point? But if he commits about 100, 200 pcs per year, then it is completely different case, fair enough?
Thank you very much for your kind attention and consideration.
Good business and give me an order soon.
PS: what is the status on the air freight requested cutting machines?
With Best Regards,