Emmegi had the most expensive machine. We spoke to several of their customers also. Everyone was very happy both with the machines and the service. We weren’t as impressed with the software.
In the end, we made our pitch to Randy regarding our findings. The Emmegi machine was really built to do curtainwall. It had the profile capabilities that we needed, it could fabricate from the underside of the profile (Mubea could also, but it had to be lubricated in the spindle where Emmegi is lubricated at the tool. This was a limitation we discovered very late in the game), and we could find very few limitations. It was very expensive. You could almost buy two Mubea machines for the price.
One thing we found in speaking with the other companies that had gone through this process was that if they were to do it over, they would have gone with the better machine. We didn’t want to spend less money now only to spend a lot more money in the long run. As my brother says: “Buy nice or buy twice”.
Despite all the homework and all of the information, we weren’t really prepared to speak to Randy’s concerns. I learned a new lesson in this process. When selling things to the boss, you better know the return on investment numbers back and forth. Features and benefits are great, but when someone is going to invest 3/4 of a million dollars in a machine, you better know how long it will take for it to pay for itself. After meeting with Randy the first time, I went back and did all of the math. We took the upcoming backlog and spread the numbers in fabrication improvements and created the back-up we needed to really speak to Randy’s concerns. In the end, using very conservative figures, we felt the machine could pay for itself in 3 years.
With those numbers and a bit more discussion, we got released to make the purchase.
