White’s Electronics Done After 70 Years

[Desert Dawg]

Wow, a sad day for sure, I owned a passle of Whites detectors over the yrs and did well with  the flagship models, I know for a fact they have some very valuable patents that would be worth taking the business over to get, its a totally  self contained little business ready to build detectors,  and is sitting there ready to go with the right people involved. Nice area too.  I think it would work for someone well heeled to take over if they know the business well.

[Sourdough Scott]

Just saw this on Facebook. This is a changing of the guard moment in American metal detectors. 

[ROCKINGCM]

Hi all,  I have lurked on here for a while and finally signed up to post.. I have 2 dead GMT detectors, any idea where I can get them repaired now?  I was trying to send them in but no replies to voice or emails. I have had them for years and don't want to just toss them.  I would appreciate any info..  Thanks to Steve for the forum, it's a nice place to look around. 

[Mike C...]

Im sure glad I was able to get a 4X6 shooter coil for my 24 K before this went down-IMO-I think theyll stay in buisness and deal direct with the public cutting out the middle men [Dealers] and pocket all the money  Mike C...

[Geotech]

2 hours ago, Glenn in CO said:

Steve, I totally agree with you and would add that they didn't listen to there dealers and distributors in what the consumer and market was asking for and was riding on what they had built on in the past.

Actually, a big problem was that they hung onto the distributor/dealer model for too long, and when they finally decided to go online & big-box they just didn't have the people and structure to do it right. Same with Tesoro. The USA survivors (FTP, Garrett) embraced online & big-box. The issue with "not listening to what the market wanted" was really "not having the people to execute it."

1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

For the same reason some funny fellows in Texas bought Bounty Hunter, Fisher, and Teknetics. The White’s name has quite substantial value if somebody out there wanted to bootstrap into the industry. The half sine patent has real potential, or would have if the engineers that could develop it had been retained. Bottom line is solvent companies buy failed companies all the time. It’s all about the price - my partner and I used to call it “picking the bones”, every time one of our competitors went out of business, and we’d buy stuff for 10 cents on the dollar. Having lived through a few of these down times, we came to see them as opportunities. Good companies plan for bad times, and have sufficient resources to take advantage of opportunities that arise during bad times to not only survive but to thrive.

White's has exceptionally little value for FTP. None of their models except maybe the GM-24k would be of any interest. The truncated half-sine patent I wrote is the only one I consider to have value, others either have little value, are easily circumvented, or are near expiration.

[Dances With Doves]

I don't know if I want to take my Gmx in the water now.What if it leaks then what  do I do?    I wonder if my 4by 6 coil also  has problems.I did not fix my  Tesoro tiger  shark when I had the chance.I buy 2 whites in a month after 20 years and this happens. I hope a American company buys the 24k  design.

[Steve Herschbach]

1 hour ago, Geotech said:

Actually, a big problem was that they hung onto the distributor/dealer model for too long, and when they finally decided to go online & big-box they just didn't have the people and structure to do it right. Same with Tesoro. The USA survivors (FTP, Garrett) embraced online & big-box. The issue with "not listening to what the market wanted" was really "not having the people to execute it."

White's has exceptionally little value for FTP. None of their models except maybe the GM-24k would be of any interest. The truncated half-sine patent I wrote is the only one I consider to have value, others either have little value, are easily circumvented, or are near expiration.

I agree less value for FT than most anyone. I was just making the example that companies buy dead companies. I can think of some possibilities that people would hate to hear about, so I’ll just let that subject be. Again, best wishes to the folks at White’s going forward.

As far as service, I doubt we will see White’s pull a Tesoro and simply abandon their customers without a word. They will probably put out some kind of statement in the coming days or weeks explaining what will happen as far as outstanding warranty, etc.

See Carls’s thoughts here

[ColonelDan]

Although I never used a Whites, I hate to see this but the competitive market place demands that those who play the game keep up with the competition.  As Steve has said, they failed to move beyond the big box detectors and their competition out did them. 

I would like to have seen Whites successfully compete as that would have served the entire detecting world well.   Competition breeds better products at better prices....just the way of our capitalistic market place.

Too bad

[Jim in Idaho]

The saddest thing about this is another American company gone. This is an ugly trend for the future.

Jim

[tboykin]

There are quite a few challenges faced by an American detector company right now, some of which I got to see in great detail being in charge of product development at White's (and lots that I will keep under my hat out of respect to an NDA). But the obvious ones related to manufacturing and development are:

• Increased US labor costs versus other countries where detectors are built
• Increased part and shipping costs
• Distribution networks based on 20th century ways of doing business
• Decreased ROI on research and development

Any American company that cannot answer these challenges will struggle to survive in what has become a crowded niche industry. Saying "but we've always done things this way" is a great epitaph. Taking too long to release a product (looking at you FTP) or making products that only target a slice of the tiny niche market (Tesoro's analog undoing) are both shortcuts to "retiring" a company. Garrett has been lucky to ride on the fumes of their marketing efforts while developing an also-ran product that follows on the heels of entry-level Minelab and Nokta/Makro (Makta? Nokro?) products.

There are also some general hobby-related issues that are putting the squeeze on the industry worldwide:

• Decreased access to detecting areas
• Decreased finds due to target depletion
• Increasing regulations
• A customer base that's aging out without replacement

The above adds up to less people detecting each year. YouTube videos will have you believe otherwise, but in the real world the hobby is dying a slow death of attrition, and guys who are getting too old to swing a detector.

So how will a manufacturer address these issues and stay in business?

By making the hobby accessible to younger newcomers. By investing in marketing and market research. By building a product lineup that includes affordable, mass-produced, simple detectors as well as advanced, high-margin, bleeding edge flagships that appeal to hobby veterans (we call this "product mix" in business). The industry and hobby will likely continue to slowly shrink, and it will take tens of millions of dollars invested in engineering projects and marketing for businesses to stay solvent as the pie gets smaller every year. So you damn well better have enough profit to make that happen, or have an investor with deep pockets and a flair for risk-taking who is willing to take those long odds of success. If a company has neither, the only rational decision is to call it and go fishing. But for the ones that can solve these problems, they will be able to gobble up pieces of the pie that are left on table by companies that cannot adapt.

The three years I worked at White's were absolutely incredible. It introduced me to a new hobby, amazing people, and experiences I would not have had if I hadn't taken a risk on a career switch in 2016. It's sad that White's is closing its doors, and my heart goes out to all of the wonderful people I worked with in Sweet Home.