C-Bus NOT AUSTRALIAN MADE

I have been using Clipsal products for many years and
always considered its products where Australian Made.

I know it's Schneider (French Owned) and not Australian
Owned but I have only just realised that all the C-Bus
stuff is NOT MADE IN AUSTRALIA, I thought it was made
in Adelaide South Australia.

Why is this happening, I'm sure that Australia is the largest
market for C-Bus so why is it being imported from China.

Lets face it, its made in China and its not cheap
so where is the benefit.

Call me patriotic, but with all the resources and talent
in Adelaide South Australia, there is NO reasons it cannot
be made in Australia.

Automan

 

The benefits are obvious mate - Chinese labour cost are extremely low compared to Australia so if you wanna make huge profits you reduce your costs - I'm sure you would do the same?


Patriotism and fair value vanished a long time ago when free trade and capitalism became king!



Dammed if I know how cheap China can make electronic goods, I recently bought (from Ebay) a good quality USB camera, with MIC & IR Leds, software, manual etc all packed up in a neat box for AUD $6.69 including Free Shipping (5 days) from China - how in the hell can they do it -- the poor manufacturer must be selling it for < $3.50 -- boggles the mind what they pay for the parts and raw materials?

If I had to pay FEDEX Freight alone it would cost me ~ $100 ?

 

Probably also worth noting... C-Bus is sold throughout the world! Look around the forums and you'll see users/installers in...

New Zealand
Sth Africa
Hong Kong
China
Vietnam
Singapore
Middle East
India
UK
Russia
Greece
Argentina
USA
Canada
Malaysia
Sri Lanka
Indonesia
Pakistan
Taiwan
Korea

and they are just the countries I can think of, off the top of my head.

Sorry if I missed someone...

Oh yea Australia

 

Haha well considering its made in china, the markup is now super astronomical, even at trade prices.

The essential design hasn't changed for over 10 years, all the technology used in clipsal cbus is over 20 years old (contention network, rs232, send/ack) and the pisspoor amount of memory in each unit is appalling. Tag files should be able to be stored within the dimmers/relays not requiring an xml. Its not 1988 and 1024kb of memory doesn't cost $400

I'm not saying its a bad product, its just that it's priced out-of-reach of the ordinary consumer which limits its popularity. Charging $600 for a 12 channel relay which would I guess to have less than $50 of components within is obscene.

Other systems are no better (dynalite etc), there is not enough competition really, too many patents to navigate.

 

C-bus is great, but I agree. I've already seen lost projects which were done on 3 times cheaper equipment (which still was distributed intelligence, EEPROM, glass design switches, dimmers, relays, multiroom, thermostats etc.)

 

I can assure you that the cost of making those things is waaaaayyyy more than what you suggest. It's that way for lots of reasons, but the biggest is the "it just works" factor. Any one can build a relay unit for flicking on and off a few incandescent light bulbs, but making a product that:

• works for thousands upon thousands of operations
• across all different kinds of load types and power factors
• that works regardless of transients, surges and dips in the mains
• whilst the utility companies are injecting hot water signalling information
• anywhere from 0-45 (and beyond) degrees
• in countries with weird mains voltages
• as the mains frequency drifts around
• in humid and/or salty environments
• not to mention working off generators
• providing power to the C-Bus network that's isolated from the mains by more than 3.75kV
• with sufficiently high impedance at communication frequencies
• and making share that all supplies share the network load equally so that no single supply is stressed more than the others
• whilst still meeting the EMC standards of every country the product is sold in
• and maintaining compatibility with every single C-Bus product that has ever been made
• ...

This is a much more difficult task, and it's one of the main reasons C-Bus products cost what they do.

 

I fully agree nick!

Cbus prices are way way too high and simply do not reflect a fair market price for what is essentially very cheap to manufacture Chinese made electronics. The huge profits must no doubt support the vast perks built into the system with so many "free lunches" out there - I am sure its not simply to maintain R&D - a large part now done in low cost asia!

Dynalite prices are much better (whose parts are fully made in Australia) and winning more and more contracts every day - but their prices are linked to be lower than Cbus and could go even lower if there was more competition and market shake-up? I Lost a number of projects to Dynalite lately as well. Since taken over by Philips they are becoming more aggressive - so may need to do a Dynamite integrator course soon?

I also hate this List Price / Trade Price fraud - its just a dirty marketing ploy that is so stupid that everyone can so easily see through! When we quote projects we all have to use Trade Prices anyway! - because of all the competition and the prices that Clipsal want for their products are fixed so they always make whatever huge profit they want?
List Price/Trade Price is just another way of extracting more profit for Clispsal or the electrical wholesaler in between - but generally the wholesalers will try to give you the best discount!

Our Margins are being squeezed everyday and Clipsal are making huge profits at our expense because we need to lower our margins to get the jobs while at the same time take the financial risk for purchase of Cbus equipment.
We take the risk to buy the stuff and sometimes when the customer fails to pay or pay on time we lose out completely!

Also I have had end user customers that can buy the Cbus parts at "trade prices" even lower than what I have been quoted because they are bigger?


A $600 - $980 (depending on what price you use) channel relay module could be made in China and imported here fully tested with a landed price of <$50 in high volumes? So what would be a fair trade price?

A fair price for a fair days work would see Cbus prices tumble immensely?

 

Hi Newman, the list of things you mention above are in the design of the system and mainly relate to the components chosen for the job and are not part of the manufacturing cost?

e.g. some of the items (1,2) on your list simply means choosing a good relay, once chosen that relay may cost something like $0.50 or less in high volumes?

I understand that there are development costs involved and that part of market price includes R&D, sales and marketing cost etc, but surely after nearly 20 years of sales clispsal have more than had those costs fully re-paid?

 

Every one of that subset of requirements I've listed increases the cost in some way, maybe small, maybe great, but quality is not free. You seem to be implying that quality is delivered by specifying the requirements and these have no impact on cost. You also seem to be suggesting that there's no link between choosing quality parts and the cost of the product.

50c for a relay that is guaranteed to switch 10A of fluorescent load for 30,000+ operations... dreaming.

You seem to be saying that once Clipsal released C-Bus to the market, all new products should be developed for free. Sure, the original C-Bus definition was done back in the early 90's, but the protocol and hardware implementation have all evolved a long, long way over time as more functionality has been added and robustness has been continually improved. This does not come for free. Neither does the truck-load of environmental, safety, EMC, UL, etc, etc testing that we're required to perform on every single new product. Then there's the software development, the technical support, the distribution chain, etc, etc.

One other thing to remember is that you're not buying some el-cheapo switch from eBay. You're buying product that is designed to last for decades with full technical support, product replacement and repair services, that is actively being developed and extended further, that "just works", with good software, with full support for 3rd party integration, etc, etc.

If you'd rather buy something cheaper, you are free to, of course, but I'd challenge you find anything in the market with the depth and breadth of completeness that C-Bus offers, all the way from product features right through to the international business support. No-one is claiming perfection, and Clipsal is aware of areas to improve, but Clipsal tries damn hard, you can be sure of that.

 

one word...

iPod

Not the cheapest, made in China... but by far the most purchased personal player on the market! Take a look at all the posts in this thread and see if they apply to iPod too

Marketing 101 from Mr Gucci.... Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten

This product is a credit to Australian passion and innovation... the patriotic point where this thread began

 

Lots of good points made in this thread, just wanted re-iterate something that doesn't seem to be being acknowledged by "Clipsal" respondee's as they obviously aren't marketing people (that wasn't meant to be a derrogatory comment, just an observation):

1. Some of the product must be cheaper now that it is being manufacturered in China, otherwise why would you do it?
2. Clipsal appears to be loosing out on jobs due to price of competitor.

I concur that the quality of the product is a credit to the Australian Engineering, but let me remind people of a very important fact in history: Beta vs VHS.

It is also true that history teaches us that history teaches us nothing.

 

Agreed... most of the responses are not by marketing people. I can assure everyone, that price is not something that is being ignored! Unfortunately, it's a little more complicated to address than you may think.

yep... sure is. If the manufacturing wasn't happening in China, prices would be even higher. C-Bus is a system. Looking at individual products in isolation (like a relay) gives a distorted perspective on pricing. Overall margins are determined on system. ie... the software is quite cheap (free) compared with other systems on the market... There are about 8 software engineers full time that cost $$... That needs to be amortized somewhere.

I (personally) would love to win every job... but unfortunately, that isn't going to happen. Competition is great! It keeps manufacturers honest and drives innovation. Having worked in sales, I hate losing jobs

I assume you mean that Beta was the better system, but the marketing of VHS won the day? True but, Beta was the adopted standard for the broadcast industry and actually lasted longer than VHS. Beta was only replaced relatively recently with digital whereas VHS was replaced some time before by DVD, in the consumer market....

Regardless, very interesting debate.

BTW, I'm lucky enough to wear both the techo and marketing hat... I thought that might have shone through in my iPod example The comments on price are not falling on deaf ears....

 

I think what he was getting at is BETA despite being the better product priced itself out of the market due to high licence fee's whereas VHS was cheaper and adopted by more. Whilst BETA may have lasted longer you can bet that much more money was made on the VHS product compared to BETA.

Moving that to C bus, a lower price may result in more units being shipped, thus more than making up for any reduced opportunity to recover. Though it does seem that Clipsal is taking the BETA stance of appearing to offer a better product at a premium price, when the reality may be somewhat different.

PS When it comes to IPOD's they are significantly cheaper in the US compared to the rest of the world. Wonder how that could be explained?

 

I think C-Bus can be successfully sold with current price and competes in many countries with more expensive systems.

Internal electronics seems pretty simple for 2010.
A switch? There are systems with 99 groups in a scene, not 10, like c-bus. More pages option in DLT switches, thermostat and thermo sensor integrated in a switch - all this would not make price much higher, i think.
A touchscreen? Maybe Ipod-like touchscreen and graphics technology could be used instead of Elo/Via old hardware.

But in general i like where C-Bus is going. I think if it continues like this it has a good potential to become main smart-home system for Schneider Electric allover the world.

 

Reality and perception are often quite different

Agree, but they're still nowhere near the average MP3 player.

Why do some people buy Toyota's and some buy a BMW's? They're all just cars aren't they? Price, features, stability, reliability.

Actually, I don't think too many people will want to buy a Toyota at the moment.

 

I will agree with nickrusanov.
C-Bus has a good potential to become main smart-home system for Schneider Electric allover the world (I will add except Europe).
I took some days ago the trainning and I become KNX partner trying to understand better the leading home automation system of the European market.
Although as a system itself it hasn't any big differences or advantages against C-Bus (actually I find it quite slow and difficult to program), I believe that the main advantage of KNX is that there is a huge variety of companies that produce a great variety of switches and special items for KNX like VRV controllers or RF remote controls etc.
Clipsal has to produce switches according to what every market need and not only according to Australian trend. For example Toyota or Kia have European and American design offices. Its not a same to exploit a little bit the experience and the size of Schneider Group

 

Pretty much everything is made in China. Its not a matter of if its made there, but who its made for.

There was some dodgy quality control in the early days but then again some of the stuff out of Adelaide used to be pretty average as well (try using the words GIU and working in the same sentence).

I have used a variety of different systems and I have to say that C-bus has got a very good reliability rate. I've never gone to a cbus job nervous that things won't fire up.

Re Beta vs VHS. One of the reasons was Beta was only better on paper, in practice it could only record a short (compared to vhs) amount if you wanted the quality that everyone raves about.

On paper specs do not tell the whole story, look at the Gameboy, it outlived the Lynx, the Game Gear (the PC Engine if you were in Japan) and in DS form the PSP.

Its technically poorer than all of its competitors, so why does it win? Better battery life and software i.e. it works better in the real world at what it does.

 

I think that is what the US auto industry wants! Toyota's are possessed, as well as Nissans or Neesans as the Americans like to call them.

 

Speaking about Toyota. Who knows, what kind of smart-home systems are being used in Japan? =)

I know that AU is C-Bus, Asia is C-Bus vs many others, US is Crestron/AMX/X10/LON, Europe is KNX + some C-Bus in UK, Russia is the big mess of all. (tell me if i' wrong). But what about Japan? It's so technically advanced...