White's is closing

[eclipse]

I will throw a hypothetical plot here (not whites related but MAY apply here as well).
Build a big international company. Get 100s of online stores and retail shops to sell your product worldwide and locally. Produce a wide range of models.
Spend money in developing new ideas, not ground breaking just new and not necessarily better than the existing ones.
But just don't put these products for sale. Patenting and lab testing is more than enough. Buy old ideas from the inventor of the PI technology.
Produce 4-5 models based on the idea which are almost identical for almost a decade, okay go underwater/beach as well that counts as new. Well throw few coil patents as well gotta have those. Now the interesting part is this. During the years buy land, buy beach houses, exotic cars, some gold bars, shares in other companies like (lets be traditional - Microsoft, CocaCola etc). Invest all you can except for the main business and just don't look at what's being done in other parts of the world (Europe) + China. They will keep buying whatever products you throw. Speaking of China why don't you produce sub 100$ machines to beat down the Chinese market share. All I'm saying.. a rock solid companies run by people who know what to do with the business know how to reinvest / invent and earn even more no matter what.

[ivconic]

"...Speaking of China why don't you produce sub 100$ machines to beat down the Chinese market share..."

Whatever they did (the Chinese); they will be always steps behind genuine engineering.
Because they don't invent new things, they just copy existing ones.
And most of those copies are lowest quality made.
By now whole world is aware that products coming from China are under huge question.
You pay less, but you buy mad cat in the sack.
I don't agree with lame "Made in China" or "Covid19 cause this" excuses.
This time i tend to agree with Carl.
Seems they lost the ground, the genuine engineering.
I remember the day Carl posted that he left White's and very skim comments about the reasons.
Obviously they were in problems from much earlier on.

[eclipse]

Thats the thing about China stuff.
You can't beat them down in the price game. On the opposite - go higher - better made/better performance, better tech support etc. The virus problem can't bring down companies just like that in a few monhts. If it was an old company it must have been run poorly in the past XX years. And the downside after all is if they decide to sell who would want to spend quite a bit on this realistically the market is getting slim and if you want to step in the gmae and swing market share you need to be CREATIVE and not a RECYCLER.

[Ferric Toes]

Very sorry to hear about Whites, having worked both with the parent US company and the UK one in Scotland for a number of years. Maybe the UK one will carry on in a more limited way. Guess we will have to wait and see.

Eric.

[ivconic]

Very sorry to hear about Whites, having worked both with the parent US company and the UK one in Scotland for a number of years. Maybe the UK one will carry on in a more limited way. Guess we will have to wait and see.

Eric.

You read my thoughts!
I was thinking the similar.
Company in Scotland seems is on its own for quite some time.
I can name one particular field where they could make breakthrough and lot of money.
The detector for the veterinarians.
I saw several local veterinarian services using old White's model, produced only in Scotland (abandoned log time by mother company) for the purpose of examining cows who swallowed various rusty pieces of irons and steel.
I can't recall exact model, probably some "AF" model with very short shaft and compact coil&enclosure setup. Produced only in Scotland for years back.
Do design genuine concept for such detector, file patent and ... voila! You are back on saddle again.
Because that is very potent niche.
Bad thing about this forum is because it is public, just anybody can read this and steal the idea.

[ivconic]

Eric i think you are most competent one to say last word on this idea.
Since i experimented a lot trying to design such detector.
I tried all known technologies.
Only PI can do the job.
Demands are known, maximal distance is 30-32cm.
Objects are 5-10cm long, thin rusty irons and steel mostly.
Sometimes barbwire mesh.
Coil preferably smaller diameter, say 20-25cm at most.
Shaft short integrated with handle.
Easy operation, less possible knobs.
Non motion preferable.
Slow SAT. Slowest possible.
One simple battery supply. Preferably 9V. Or two.
Those are professionals. They need simplest possible but effective tool.

[dbanner]

China is not to be blamed at all.

[Ferric Toes]

The industrial market is huge, or was until Covid-19. There are already companies in the UK who make industrial detectors for mines, quarries, recycling plants, sawmills, food, textiles, fishing, hospital laundries; the list goes on. I used to make Woodtec for timber scanning and Vettec for cows and other animals that swallow metal.

This is really for another thread for potential markets, other than hobby. I also think it would be useful for me to make a list of developments I have been involved it that never got into production, or were still only in concept form. Some think that PI has reached the end of it's development, but I would question that as I know there is so much more that can be done.

Eric

[ivconic]

The industrial market is huge, or was until Covid-19. There are already companies in the UK who make industrial detectors for mines, quarries, recycling plants, sawmills, food, textiles, fishing, hospital laundries; the list goes on. I used to make Woodtec for timber scanning and Vettec for cows and other animals that swallow metal.

This is really for another thread for potential markets, other than hobby. I also think it would be useful for me to make a list of developments I have been involved it that never got into production, or were still only in concept form. Some think that PI has reached the end of it's development, but I would question that as I know there is so much more that can be done.

Eric

Please start new topic and disclose Vettec as much as you can.
I am interested in that part.
I would like to make some comparisons to my experiences so far.

[Hamid]

That’s so sad I hope they will come back to producing soon.

Well, Undoubtedly, White’s Electronics made great metal detectors across the 70 years. I have to admit the cheapest whites metal detectors defeat lot of metal detectors.

[Sean_Goddard]

I've had my Eagle Spectrum since the day they were released in the uk and it's STILL the best machine going. I also have an ETrac. For build the Spectrum wipes the floor with ANYTHING Minelab had to offer. On the beach, the ETrac wins hands down. Inland I'd say the Spectrum is better as it is much more predicatble although depth wise, the ETrac is easily twice what the Spectrum can get (and the Spectrum is damned deep).

Whites just ooze QUALITY and performance but their continued attempts to produce low end machines to rival the Garrett Ace series have been nothing but junk. IMHO the Classic was a great machine. Who needs TID on a cheap machine? THe WHOLE points of a switch on and go like the Classic is that you DON'T know what you are going to dig up, and THAT is the WHOLE point of metal detecting, the thrill that it just MIGHT be a rare coin but could just as easily be junk.

Whites have basically FAILED to exploint the security and industrial markets and there is too much competition from China to survive in the hobby market alone. That said though, most Chinese machines (even the clones) are simply CRAP, nothing more, nothing less (sorry China)

[eclipse]

If a company announces it is stepping out of business, the products are bound to go down in prices (no support).
I think they loose trust and it is a bad choice. Why didn't they keep quiet about this - keep couple of guys on a payroll I just don't get it. Or perhaps they did for quite a while and kept quiet?

[Carl-NC]

Whites just ooze QUALITY and performance but their continued attempts to produce low end machines to rival the Garrett Ace series have been nothing but junk. IMHO the Classic was a great machine. Who needs TID on a cheap machine? THe WHOLE points of a switch on and go like the Classic is that you DON'T know what you are going to dig up, and THAT is the WHOLE point of metal detecting, the thrill that it just MIGHT be a rare coin but could just as easily be junk.

Actually, the Prizm series came out just before the Ace 250 and slightly outperformed the Ace. That the Ace took off and captured the market is precisely due to the fact that White's was still embracing the disty/dealer model and Garrett embraced the Internet. And, yes, TID was and is necessary to compete in that market. Just ask Tesoro.

Whites have basically FAILED to exploint the security and industrial markets and there is too much competition from China to survive in the hobby market alone.

When I joined White's the #1 priority project was a walk-thru security detector. I got it finished and even built a production line for it. It was ready to sell but as I was leaving the company, they decided to cancel the whole thing.

[Carl-NC]

If a company announces it is stepping out of business, the products are bound to go down in prices (no support).
I think they loose trust and it is a bad choice. Why didn't they keep quiet about this - keep couple of guys on a payroll I just don't get it. Or perhaps they did for quite a while and kept quiet?

I think it's a credit to White's to make the announcement. Tesoro did what you suggest, they just laid off everyone and closed without an official notice. Ticked off a lot of people. And everyone knew right away as ex-employees posted it on forums. Can't keep something like that a secret.

[Kemper]

When the MX Sport came out there were problems with the first run. We were talking about it at Dankowski forum with a Whites representative that said he would be answering our questions. He only answered the questions he wanted to answer. I was pushing for them to recall the first run as they all had inferior parts. When I kept pushing for a recall and wanting serial numbers of the first run posted the Dankowski mob attacked me. When that happened, I,on another thread said that Dankowski forum sucks and it did and still does.

There was an opportunity there to push for what was the right thing to do ( recall ) and post serial numbers to avoid these machines being out in the open market. To this day you can not be assured you don't have an inferior ,first run MX Sport. I think issues surrounding the MX Sport hurt the Whites company more than anything else in recent years.

Forums can be good for doing positive things for the detecting community. Whites chose to go to Dankowski forum where money is always a priority over what is best for the hobby. Dankowski didn't ban the representative from Whites for coming on the forum and lying to the members about asking questions. Dankowski let Whites use his forum to try to get past the MX Sport debacle without doing what they should have for the consumers.
Dankowski banned me for trying to have accomplished what would have been best for the detecting community.