Selling the dream

In 1967, Hallicrafters released a new receiver, the SX-122A. A sophisticated piece of equipment, to be sold to a sophisticated customer. While the radio offered plenty to brag about, the advertisement appearing in radio magazines depicted a young listener, in front of a map of the world, ‘sailing’ the radio waves. Playing on words, and referencing the then popular song “The impossible Dream”, the advertisement’s punch line was “Dream the possible Dream”. Yes, with Hallicrafters, your dreams will come true; the entire world is yours, to be explored. Dream with your eyes wide open. Dream of Hallicrafters radio.

The golden days of print advertising, long gone – and forgotten.

The ICOM 9700 is one of the most sophisticated triband fully duplex radios on the market. Actually, if your dream is to own the most compact, most powerful, fully duplex radio which offers supreme UHF/VHF performance, then there is no other radio on market that will satisfy your needs. A product of clever engineering, the result of years of development in a very narrow market segment, for a very specific user. Not to mention a huge investment in manufacturing and assembly lines, rigorous testing, assuring that every radio delivered performs as intended, backed by an iron clad guarantee.

Yet today, in Australia, sophisticated radios are sold by unsophisticated retailers to whom the ham radio is not a pursuit for perfection, or a dream about making distant contact, or surfing the air waves harnessing the cutting edge of two way radio communications. The advertising and retail is reduced to the most vulgar pursuit of lowering the price in order to insert ‘market dominance’. A vulgar, primitive, inefficient retail model which devalues everything ICOM stands for.

Here is an example: in Australia, the recommended retail price of IC-9700 is $2,900. An equivalent to 10 working days’ wages. Yet the self-proclaimed ‘largest dealer in Australia’ advertises this radio as ‘regular price $2,495’ only to reduce it, once more, in the same breath, to $2,349. Practically, almost wholesale price. Quite frankly, if I was ICOM, I would feel insulted.

Here is another detail: this very same radio retails for an equivalent of $3,300 in Germany. In the US, the largest ham market in the world, post discount, tax free price is $2,750 AUD.

Yet in a tiny colony, far away, with a handful of amateurs interested in UHF/VHF, the price has to be slashed close to wholesale. Why?

Discounting is like a sharp knife. It has to be handled extremely carefully. Slashing the prices madly and indiscriminately will eventually result in a cheapening of the brand itself.

And ultimately, someone will have to pay the price for reckless madness.