Nick supplied the Scorpion from the US manufacturer. The Scorpion was and is a good machine, i believe an industry leader in its day and although not perfect, no machine ever is.
Now with all things considered including budgets, instead of being able to launch his own machine to move forward, Nick decided to supply the US made machine which updated the Scorpion. As a business decision, that was sound and was with all intents and purpose the right move. It had all the things needed - brand new motors, pressure gauge, lightweight, pump in/out and a good price - all specs good and us being in his shoes i think we would of made the same decision. The Scorpion was reliable and there was nothing other than the motors which were a little untried that would suggest the Jag would be anything but reliable again.
Then the Jag came out and had problems which IMO should have never been there before releasing it to suppliers like Nick. This opened up a whole nightmare of reliability issues which Nick had to put right to manage damage limitation and help his customers. Yes there was some spin involved with marketing these as upgrades but put in the same position fighting to hold onto reputation and customer retention, we would all of had to do the same.
My point was always that even though Nick took the brunt of flack for it as he would as the supplier, it was in fact him being let down by the initial manufacture and fighting his way out of it and for all my differences with Nick (which i have spoken to him directly about!) i applaud him for having the balls to put up the cash and launch his own machine. It is the positive way forward for Solutions and having the maintenance program with it will mean peace of mind for any one wanting to pay the monthly amount for the offset of not worrying about maintaining the machine themselves to some extent.
One post compared it to cars, if you buy a Japanese car that has inherent faults, the garage cops the flack when its been let down by manufacture and this is the same.
By producing his own machine, atleast Nick can manage any flack safe in the knowledge it does genuinely belong at his doorstep or indeed sit back and reap the endorsements if that turns out to be the case.
If Nick does one thing well it is to scrutinize products and reproduce them in a better format, so it wouldnt surprise me if thats whats happened here and the new machines turn out to be excellent little suckers.
Obviously this is all simply my opnion
, and i think the positive upshot from it all is in our industry we now have all the major players in the UK making their own UK made machines and in this day and age, its great to be in a position where we can genuinely use our own countries tackle and start to lead the way hopefully (even though i know the guts will all be foreign made
)
I hope none of that is seen as abuse and clarifies what i was trying to say.
Now we just need a decent International football team
