Reverse Engineering Buckles

Challenge

Several buckles were available to the company. However, extensive testing was required to ensure that in this industry, there would be no failures due to extremely high product liability costs. Secondly, buckles had a clearly discernible look and therefore had been adopted by competitors consistent with their product design and positioning.

Solution

-Despite being fully constrained by marketing and product testing constraints as to which buckle could be used, created competitive alternative in incumbent vendor’s mind as to the willingness of management to consider complete replacement of incumbent.
-Met face to face with each and every potential vendor and became limited testing of alternatives to ensure that incumbent vendor would be aware of management’s willingness to change.
-Reversed engineered the materials and estimated incumbent vendor’s manufacturing cost to develop company estimate of fair prices.
-Toured vendor factory to confirm that estimated costs was approximately correct.
-Opened negotiations with incumbent vendor with target price that was achieved.

Results

Vendor pricing was reduce an average of over 50%.