New Lower Pricing Panels and Low Expansion Material for UltraBaseSystems
Read Video Transcript and Main Points Addressed Below
I want to talk to you a little bit today about materials and pricing. That is a huge issue for all of us. We’re all looking for the best price possible. We’re kind of in a rock in a hard place here. I’m the kind of person that I want to build something that is extremely good. I am not interested in selling something that is a low cost product. Cheap material is just not in my DNA, so we’ve always tried to build the strongest best possible products. Sometimes I’ve had guys say, well you’re over built. You know what? I like to be over built. I want our products to last and in fact, I can tell you that in the years I’ve been doing this we if ever have replaced panels because they’re broken. They just last.
Low Expansion Materials Are Here to Stay As An Option
This last episode we talked about a new material that we developed which was a low expansion material and really what that meant was I was trying to develop a plastic that kind of defeats what plastic typically tries to do which is expand and contracts. We wanted to add as much material and fairy dust, if you will, to the material to reduce the amount of expansion and contraction. And we did it. And we did it very successfully. But, that came at a price. You know I was thinking and had been reminded by some folks that I’m trying to create a product that will make it easy for everyone to install. Well you know we’ve been installing UltraBaseSystems for years with you know very, very few user or installer errors. Typically those installer errors are because they don’t leave enough gapping between the panels. You hear us talking about that all the time. Well this new material helped in reducing that problem, but it raise the price.
Newly Formulated Process – Lower Cost Pricing Panels
What I’ve done is I’ve gone back in to my original blend. Got with my chemist, got with my material suppliers and said look, let’s take what we’ve been doing for years, let’s refine it, and let’s get it at a better cost than we’ve ever had before. I challenged him to do that and you know what? We did it. By doing that, you’re going to see starting in the weeks to come an announcement of a lower priced panel system that’s going to primarily be the alter based professional and the alter based champion. It will lead us into other panels like the new max panel coming out and or the quart system that is in our day to day material to go underneath the sport tiles.
But what it’s going to mean to you guys is that you’re going to see a sizeable reduction in price per square foot. So you’re going to have to be careful in installing. Nothing different than what you’ve done for years in the past, but you’re still going to have to pay attention to the whole rule of when it’s cold, you gap it all the way, and when it’s hot you still have to gap it, but not quite as much. Once we got that down, I think you’re all going to see a great benefit from the lower cost. We’re excited by it. We want the product to be affordable to the entire industry world wild and we think this is a really good way of doing it. Now that we’re going to have a lower cost material to be able to offer better costing panels.
Why We Feel Lower Expansion Material Is Still A Huge Innovation
I want you to understand something. I am still extremely proud of this low expansion material and we’re going to keep as part of our inventory. Why? Because I love how it works on golf greens and maybe bocce courts because it does expand so little, you can reduce the amount of gaps, which means that for the thinner turfs like putting turf and to our bocce court or croquet, you won’t have as much gapping between the panel. Not that we ever see the turf want to indent or impressions into the gaps, but this is just a way for us to close the panel up even more, I think to get a cleaner look, so that if you want to do the lower expansion material, it’s going to be a little bit more pricey, but it’s going to be available. If not, we’re going to be building putting greens for five, seven years with the everyday material with no issues. Again, I will let you know that we will keep that low expansion material available and if you have a need for it, talk to us, and we can give you pricing and why we think it might be better for certain applications.
