What's Fisher Up To ?

[Tony]

1 hour ago, Luis said:

something may come.  I recently contacted Fisher on eBay to tell them that they had to review the shipping costs and when they responded I took the opportunity to ask if they were going to release something new and the response was soon.  I leave the screenshot of the conversation

I wasn't going to mention this publicly but can't see the harm.....I enquired about the shipping costs to Australia and Fisher offered me free shipping on their current eBay listings. 🙂

[Tony]

On 4/6/2024 at 3:01 PM, phrunt said:

New Products - Coming soon would just be the template placers.

Simon....of all the people here on DP, I expected you to support my conspiracy theories and wild speculations🤪

[phrunt]

8 hours ago, Tony said:

Simon....of all the people here on DP, I expected you to support my conspiracy theories and wild speculations🤪

If those placers were on other manufacturers sites.... I likely would have. 🙂   I don't think Fisher have released a new detector since I started detecting, thinking back there have been a fair few paint jobs, the best one I think was the F19 to a Bounty Hunter, that turned a good detector into a bargain.  The Gold Bug remake as they could no longer get parts for the original was another one, but that's a downgrade in my opinion. 

They did release a new coil; I'll give them that.  I haven't heard much about it though.

The Impulse is not their product, they just helped bring someone else's product to market, which is what their electronics manufacturing business does.    If the maker of the Impulse had the funding he could have just used their circuits manufacturing business and had it made for him and kept it his product, and when it had its own website, it did seem like that was the case that they worked out some minor partnership whereby he can use their name and distribution to help get it to market, http://www.ftpcircuits.com/ 

Electronics Manufacturing (Circuit board Assembly)

The most simple and easiest board can be produced very quickly. Years ago, single sided boards were much cheaper to produce than plated through hole-boards but now the difference is minimum. Single sided boards lack the ‘barrel’ (the plated hole) of double sided plated through hole-boards.

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As you can see, he could have kept it his own product, and just had them make it if he had the money to do so, it's probably what drew him to First Texas in the first place.

If their new strategy is just selling on Ebay with make an offer pricing so people pay for their detectors what the buyer thinks they're worth (within reason) I think it is going to spring some life back into Fisher detectors.  They're going to get more sales, more users, more discussion on their detectors,  Quite a good stragegy to bring old products back to life. 

 

[mn90403]

How many times have we said on Detector Prospector that improvements in detectors have been marginal?  First Texas is out to prove it.

Buy one of their 'effective' older detectors or buy one of the 'new and improved' from someone else.

When I started detecting in 2010, I joined a couple of clubs and bought a Minelab 5000.  One of the guys in one of the clubs was a Fisher Dealer.  A few years later we ended up buying a Gold Bug Pro.  Steve had the Gold Bug Pro on one of his short lists of detectors to have for many years!  We found gold with it.  It took me a while to find gold with the 5000 but I did of course.

The President of one of the clubs I joined still uses a Gold Bug to this day.  He had it modded years ago but for him it still works.  

When I read about 'What is Fisher doing?' I'd say they are now selling effective detectors at effective prices.  I hope this doesn't portend their end in the detector business, but it does reflect some of the true manufacturing costs and shows us what direct to consumer prices are.

They don't need to add a big R&D percentage to the costs.  The amount of improvement they will get over their 'effective' line is marginal.

[phrunt]

A big part of Fisher's problem is the fake detectors, it's made it so difficult for them to sell detectors outside of the US, the genuine ones have almost disappeared from sale outside of USA in many other countries, especially in my part of the world.  The fakes are readily available, the genuine ones aren't.  I hate to say it but the fakes are now working just as well as the real deal, except their coils are a little hit and miss, some get good ones, others don't, a bit like Minelab GPX's 😛

Then there is this, here is their Ebay listing for the GB2 with 2 coils, brilliant deal by the way, I'd buy it myself if I didn't have it already!    I marked the points of interest with red arrows.

People who viewed that GB2 deal, also viewed four fake Gold Bug Pro DP packages for sale which Ebay advertises on Fisher's ad.

A fake GBP DP package, see how they white out the Fisher branding off the box, pretty futile seeing they didn't bother to white it out on the detector too 🙂 At least they tried! 

The fakes sell well, on that listing 8 sold, 1 left, as soon as that one sells, another 10 will appear.  You look on the Chinese sites and they have them available by the 10,000, more than Fisher produce without a doubt.

How can they compete with that? The fakes have destroyed Fisher, they're partly to blame by keeping models for so long, especially models that had already been cloned.  When the Minelab X-terra was first cloned, it was quickly discontinued.

[abenson]

Make a reasonable offer on that Gold Bug 2 and I bet they would accept it. I needed a new pin pointer and made an offer for the F pulse for $100 and they accepted.

[Desert Dawg]

I will admit I couldn't resist the GB2 special with two coils. I found more small gold with a GB2 in the past 12 yrs than all other machines combined. It did better than my latest gold monster too.

[phrunt]

See, their method is working great, all these people buying their products that otherwise wouldn't.   I've seen so many people now that just couldn't resist and bought something, when a week ago it wasn't even in their head to buy these products.  Well done Fisher, you've worked out a way to bring your product back to life.

[Tony]

$787 Aussie dollars landed to my front door.....free shipping and no import taxes either (Under the $2000 threshold into Australia). Exactly $1000 less than buying locally 😲

Just highlights how much local markup there is down here.

 

[phrunt]

18 hours ago, Tony said:

Just highlights how much local markup there is down here.

That, along with their fire sale pricing is cheaper than they have been selling to dealers.

If this is the new Fisher, with their new pricing method, I'm quite happy, they were always overpriced I thought, now they're good value and sales are clearly going to increase, the Fisher part of the forum is busier now as it's been in years.