• Knowledgeable design engineers, and I mean up-to-date knowledge of digitally-designed metal detector circuitry. And not just one individual, but a 'team' of engineers combined with a group of in-house as well as selected product users who can test and evaluate the product in order to help the manufacturer develop a quality and performance-based product by release date.

• An excellent marketing plan, and that means the people who can handle the needs of marketing both the physical product as well as the quality and customer service after the product is in consumer's hands.

Product development and design calls for a dedicated, above-average lead engineer and support team. That takes $$$.

An advertising and marketing program takes a knowledgeable and savvy leader and also a support team to develop and plan the best marketing strategies, literature, and ability to spread-the-word, and in this modern era that means on Forums and websites, etc. That, too, takes an investment of $$$.

I know that FTP has the engineering team, and I'm sure they have the $$$ and ability to direct toward marketing in today's world which is mostly an on-line, internet-based approach. I see them working to get caught up with today's product leaders.

I am not certain who the electronic design engineer is at Garrett, but have been able to monitor the marketing they do for their product on a world-wide basis. I think they still might be in a position to create a newer, and better, entire product line to meet the changing times and demands of the industry.

As for White's, I haven't a clue who their design engineer might be these days, or for some time now. And they have lost a lot of their marketing presence on some on-line Forums. With both of these two manufacturers, I have owned and/or used most of their lower-end (lower-cost) models and found them to be very underwhelming, lacking functional features, providing sub-par performance, and basically being inferior to much of the competition on the market today. And in the near future they are going to be slipping farther behind with some newer low-cost models to soon be introduced.

And I've been more than frustrated for quite some time with bad marketing by introducing new products that have a lot of failures and issues right from the start, or accessory products that are not well built, or replacement substitutes that continue to be 'breakable'.

Unless there are some notable changes in the way of designers and marketing and product in general, I only see it a matter of time before another US Detector Manufacturer joins Tesoro and those who have gone down before them.

Sad but true.

Monte

"Your EYES ... the only 100% accurate form of Discrimination!"
Stinkwater Wells Trading Post
Metal Detector Evaluations and Product Reviews monte@ahrps.org ... or ... monte@stinkwaterwells.com 503-481-8147Nokta / Makro: FORS CoRe, FORS Relic, Racer 2 and Simplex + also using Makro and Pulse-Dive PinpointersTesoro: Bandido II µMAX and Silver Sabre µMAX ... White's: modified IDX Pro ... XP: ORX ... Fisher: F44Headphones: Killer B's 'Hornet' and 'Wasp' -- Detector Pro Gray Ghost XPNote: Detectors are listed alphabetically by Brand. Models are chosen based on search site conditions.*** All working well today to make memories for tomorrow. ***