ORIGINAL: Clay Walters
Is all this speculation a jump of the gun? Won't this affect folks like Valley View as well? How does this help Tower Hobbies in the long run? One of the main reasons DLE has been so popular is they've been selling nice little engines at a nice little price. Change up the recipe and the popularity will decline.
Clay
I would tend to agree. If Tower does indeed work its way into a monopoly on the DLE's, and prices rise, the engines won't be quite as popular as they are now. If they decide to make a DLE within dollars of a DA, I would definitely go with the DA. Right now, the DLE's are approximately 70% of the price of a similar DA. If it goes to 85-90%, I would definitely go with the DA. I would speculate OS and Futaba are less popular now than they used to be precisely because Hobbico positioned them as a premium brand and raised the prices. I know I bought a couple of Saito engines because I didn't feel the "value" of the OS 4-stroke pricing...