Originally Posted by
Truckracer
speedracer, you are so correct regarding high end servos! Competition and helis pushed their development and I am very thankful for that. I would bet these are far more profitable for the servo and radio companies than the so called sport servos. Especially with the extremely low cost sport servos that flood the market these days. Likewise for the high end engines. They probably sell far fewer of these high end products but they are more profitable per unit. Just guessing though.
As a point of interest, it seems the mainline radio companies are reducing their servo lines these days. Probably because of all the other companies producing only servos. I haven't bought a high end Futaba or JR servo in many years! Too many other quality choices to pay the Futaba or JR premium price.
Its been a long time since I was in the industry. The profit margins are much smaller then what people think. We would actually make more money selling an Futaba FM 7 channel radio over the first PCM radio. The high end specialty stuff was very slim margins mainly due to smaller market. Most airplane kits were priced 33% over cost, we stocked the complete Byron line and only made 25% from those kits. Granted they were high dollar kits. Some engines such as Rossi, OPS and Webra were priced 20% over cost. We made more selling an OS 25 FSR then a .90 FSR. I agree about servos, I haven't bought a Futaba servo in 20 years. But the servos I do buy are always high quality units. I have been known to buy used if in good shape. My Extra uses a combination of Hitec, JR and Savox servos simply because I had to buy a pair at a time and got what was a good deal at the time.