Lidatek Laser Echo 2 Group Buy

[WylM5]

Wow! Thanks for the great write up there Jason. Sounds like a very upfront business if they were so helpful towards all your questions and let you "snoop" around their shop. Makes me feel even more confident about this purchase.

WylM5

[ultim8 5]

Great write up jason Now I want this thing even more ! Thanks

[Magoo]

Great job and thanks to everyone involved. Count me in for one unit plus an extra transponder.

Mike....

[BMW_Jim]

Fantastic write up Atomic80!

Count me in for one unit and an extra transponder.

Let me know how to purchase the unit.

Thanks to all for your hard work. This board rocks!!

[atomic80]

Originally posted by celler
Jason,

Thanks for all the hard work put into your excellent writeup. I noted with interest where the Lidatek guys wanted us to mount the transponders. That's where I thought they would go all along, but I discovered a potential problem tonight. I got the size specs from here . It looks like the transponder is almost 3 inches long. However, the lip in front of the grille on my beast is only about 2 1/2 to 2 3/4. This means unless we do some surgery to the grill mesh, the transponder is going to stick out a bit. This takes me back to my original question, has anybody mounted these puppies on an M5 and how do they look.

Craig.

Craig,

These guys at the shop were VERY helpful so maybe they could help us work something out as far as getting those Lidatek units to fit. They fabricate all the parts in-house so maybe they will be able to come up with a special "shorter" version for us. Try emailing Jared at the address I provided earlier to see what you can come up with. Tell them that Jason with the blue M5 sent you.

[atomic80]

I just received an email from Jared over at Lidatek. It looks like we may have to establish a single contact person representing all of us. They do accept all major credit cards so we could figure out a way to do this. Maybe instead of having one single contact person we can just establish a group buy by having each and everyone directly contact Lidatek and say that they're with the bmwm5.com group buy. We need to get at least 40 committed buyers here in order to get the $349.95 price for two transponders. Think we could do it?

Here's the email:

----------

Jason,

No I wasn't at Lidatek yesterday much to my regret -- Jeremy and Andy were
the two you met with. Jeremy had fun teasing me that I missed seeing my
"dream car".

What site are you referring to?

I did notice on the thread that someone referred to alterations to the case
to make it shorter -- that isn't possible since the design has the circuit
board all the way to the end of case.

As for a group buy, our normal discounts are

6 units -- 5% off
12 units -- 10% off
24 units -- 20% off

For group buys like yours, if you get 40 people we would be willing to sell
the dual setup for the single setup price -- i.e. instead of $449.95, it
would be $349.95. As Andy noted, a dual setup is superior to a single
setup. Single setups are best for small cars or motorcycles. We also
custom alter the single setup if someone is going to put it on a motorcycle
(shorter cables, etc.).

As for logistics -- we would prefer to deal with a single point of contact
for the buy. If you or the contact person can get all the names, credit
card information, billing address and shipping address, and aggregate it for
us then we could process all the orders and ship them out. We accept AMEX,
MasterCard, Visa, and Discover.

We can't ship any units to Europe, Israel, or South Africa -- anyone who is
from those regions would need to send their contact information to us and we
would forward their information to our master distributors in those regions.

Please feel free to call or email me if you have any additional questions or
comments.

-jmp

[donp307]

I wonder how effective a bra would be at reducing the threat of laser (assuming that bra material is not reflective). Then, all you'd have is the headlights to worry about. I wouldn't want one on my car all the time but for long trips where "stealth cruise mode" is desirable I could deal with one (keep bugs/rocks off too).

[Gustav]

atomic80, that is a great and excellent writeup!

Thanka alot!

[Teutonaddict]

Originally posted by atomic80
As for a group buy, our normal discounts are

6 units -- 5% off
12 units -- 10% off
24 units -- 20% off

For group buys like yours, if you get 40 people we would be willing to sell the dual setup for the single setup price -- i.e. instead of $449.95, it would be $349.95.

Using the 40 unit scenario: $100 off of a $450 retail price nets a whopping 22% discount! And that's for an incremental 16 additional units! That don't make sense! "For group buys like yours" must be code for We Don't Like GP's...

Perhaps Jared is a better Marketing or Technical guru than a mathematician?

I was on the verge of a one unit/two transponder purchase commitment, but I feel like we're leaving something on the table. This has to represent a pretty significant bit of revenue for them ($14K). From Lidatek's perspective, their margins are growing considerably as the GP expands.

Let's shoot for 30% --or at least a 25% discount!

Whaddya think? Or am I just a greedy, cheap bastard?

[Hamann7]

Teutonaddict,

I absolutely agree with you! $100 off is not a good deal for the marketing exposure we are giving them and moving this many units at one time.

They need to realize that this is a very high profile group of motorists who can really boost their business. And trust me, they need it after having basically no revenue for the past 9 months, since they have been in R&D mode.

We have people in our group who own M5s, 996TTs, M3s, etc.-- you can't ask for a better constituency.

My original goal, just so you know, has always been 33% off! I hope everyone will stick with me on this, so that we can get this price, or close to it.