I was about to pull the trigger on the Mechron over the RTV500 when I decided to call Kioti USA and ask them directly who now makes the CVT. I had been staring at their brochure, and Kioti's toll free number was right there, and I thought, who better to ask than Kioti themselves? Just about anyone else, it seems.
There is no reason whatsoever that a manufacturer would be obligated to reveal who makes subassemblies for them. In some cases, they may do so for marketing reasons (e.g. a Dodge Ram pickup with Cummins engine badge on side). In other cases, you have no prayer of finding out the info directly from the company. There are valid reasons for obfuscating who supplies components.
The call was answered on Kioti's end by a lady who turned out to be a switchboard attendant and/or receptionist of some sort. I informed her that I was a potential buyer with a technical question regarding the Mechron. She put me through to another lady. I again stated that I had a technical question regarding the Merchon. She promptly and rather curtly told me to contact my dealer. I explained that the dealer was over 100 miles away and requested that she put me in contact with an individual who could answer a technical question regarding the Merchon.
Trained technical people cost money to employ -- a lot of money. There is a really good reason your call is not simply forwarded to the head of RTV R&D at Kioti -- that person is doing the things that the company anticipates will add value, and dealing with your call is not one of those things. Kioti corporate probably does in fact have a bunch of technical people dedicated to dealing with customer issues, and these issues are relayed from customers through Kioti dealerships. Otherwise, random people -- including competitors -- are calling up Kioti R&D asking "who did you guys buy subassembly XYZ from?".
If you want more technical people on staff, attending to these types of queries, their total employment cost is going to be incurred in the end product. It costs -- including direct salary, benefits, training, and plant overhead -- about US$200K/year to have trained/experienced technical staff in the USA answering questions on the phone. The more people that you add, the higher the aggregate loaded cost of the employees and therefore the higher the burden on a per unit basis. So to maintain adequate operating margin the overall cost of the end product goes up. And that increased product cost can lead to reduced sales in a highly competitive market, can't it?
Let's analyze this concept financially in more depth. Your lost sale, at current tractor industry pricing margins, equates to about 6-8% of the purchase price. So, which is larger... 6-8% of your purchase price, or US$200K? I highly suspect the latter. If the "cost" of your lost sale is less than US$200K, then Kioti "won" economically -- that is, they didn't spend US$200K to make a tiny fraction of that back on a sale to you. If you were running a business, would you do that? For how long could you do that? Now of course you could argue that if they lost "N" sales, not just your one sale, then it could make a difference. True. But 1) it's hard to know the effects ahead of time, and 2) this support burden really should be on the dealers and the conduit into Kioti corporate.
If you had in fact gotten a technical person on the phone, I suspect that you would still have been frustrated by the fact that he/she would not have provided you with the name of the CVT manufacturer. Sometimes supplier arrangements are complicated, and covered by a variety of non-disclosure agreements.
So, in this instance, better sources of information might have included the dealer and probably google. Surely there is someone who has spent some quality time with the CVT unbolted and has a forum post or writeup on the repair thereof, and where replacement parts were sourced from. Did you try that approach?
n.b.
#1)
By the way I have no skin in this game. As disclosure I own a tractor built by a company starting with a K. It's not a Kioti. But the economics and information presented above is the case at ANY company -- whether you are building tractors or PC's or iPhones.
#2)
I'm an engineer at a large company. I don't expect the "switchboard person" (LoL) to direct calls to me so I can answer random questions from folks. If someone I do not personally know ends up on the phone asking me to identify a supplier, I would politely inform them that I can not provide such information. If they press on, I would politely inform them that the end of the kite string is theirs to hold.
#3)
I called Corning Inc once, because I had an issue with the glass panels in my wood stove cracking over and over again. The folks at Vermont Castings were nice but they could not solve the problem, other than to sell me new glass. That resulted in more cracked glass. So I figured I would call a big name "tier 1" float glass manufacturer and have them determine what the best glass for my application would be. I called Corning and I got bounced around -- in the process I talked with about 7 people in the Corning glass products group, and the last guy I talked to really took interest in my problem -- so much so that he sent me 6 pieces of glass (which he personally prepared and cut) to try out in my application. Those 6 pieces are in still in my stove, more than 10 years later. Did Corning "win" using this unconventional approach?
Wrooster
