Why we’re not always the cheapest

Clients have come to us in the past with quotes from other companies, asking us if we really are the best choice, why it is we’re not always the cheapest?

There are factories out there that cut corners in order to bring down the unit cost. The following is a list of how manufacturers can dramatically reduce the cost of USB flash drives:

• Hack the memory chip so it appears larger than it is. (256mb hacked to appear like 512MB)

• Buy recycled memory and sell as “new”

• Use faulty PCBs or badly designed Controller chips.

• Low Quality Plastic Casing

• Cheap Finish

• Use paint without hardeners so the Logo print easily rubs off

These are commonly know as “White chips” and tend to be unreliable, more prone to data loss, and often suffer from quite bad degradation over time.

A well designed USB chip should work perfectly for approximately 10,000 write/erase cycles, which is the equivalent of filling and emptying the stick once a day for 27 years. “White chips” however, may start to suffer right from the first cycle. Other problems that are far more likely with these sorts of practices include operating systems failing to recognise the memory at all, error messages and very slow data transfer speeds.

There are also factories out there that use perfectly good chips, but just of a lower quality. These goods should last roughly the same amount of time as our chips (10,000 cycles), but tend to have slower read/write speeds and be slightly more prone to errors. There’s nothing wrong with these sticks, in the same way there’s nothing wrong with Tesco Value coffee. However, you wouldn’t serve it to an important customer, would you?

Now at the USB Company, we realised that you can only be the best at one thing. We decided that rather than join the multitude of companies who try to compete at price, trying their best to cut another corner to get those extra few pennies off of the manufacturing cost of each stick, we’d rather compete on quality.

We decided that while Mercedes Benz aren’t the cheapest car manufacturer, they are considered among the best, and while Ryan Air can often out price their competitors by quite a margin, we’d all rather not fly with them if we can afford anything else.

In order to do this, we have teamed up with factories in the Far East, where quality, rather than cost, is the number one priority. We are very careful as to who we buy parts from, be it controller chips or hardeners for the paint, and have set up relationships with our suppliers over several years

We also have an extensive quality assurance system, testing items both at the point of manufacture and here in the UK.

So, some companies may be a little cheaper than us. However, our products are likely to be a bit better than theirs, with a better finish, better materials used, and better technology inside.

However, we would recommend avoiding them like the plague! Remember, if they are charging you less, they are also buying for less, and buying for less usually means cutting corners, not margins.

“The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price has faded from memory.” – Aldo Gucci,