The band on my Garmin running watch broke. So, I checked out the options on Amazon. The price ranges were wild. The most expensive were close to $40 with others around $10. I thought that $10 still sounded a bit high, so I searched the Internet for a cheaper option.
That’s when I came across temu.com. There I found watch bands direct from China that were as low as $4! “Wow,” I thought. “Sounds great, I mean it’s just a rubber watch band, so what could go wrong?”
Actually, quite a lot. The band had less buckle holes so the fit wasn’t comfortable. The rubber started cracking after just a few workouts and flaked off over time. I quickly found out that this deal really was too good to be true. Considering that I run about 1,000 miles a year, why was I so excited to save $6 on something unknown?
There’s something about human nature that allows us to create false equivalents when making comparisons. We tend to forget that there are many factors that should be considered only using two to three when making a choice.
Making bigger decisions is even more complex.
Think about all the options a farmer or seed company has when selecting a service provider, equipment brand, freight company, or genetics supplier. The cheap prices get folks’ attention and decision-makers skip doing the deep dive into what sacrifices accompany those “great” deals.
We see this in our business too. We are not the cheapest in anything we do. Seed production, warehousing, rebagging, genetic offerings, nursery services, and our other business solutions are all priced so that we can employ high-quality people, offer great products, use modern equipment, and earn a margin that is sustainable for us and our clients. We haven’t built a three-generation, 83-year-old company by focusing on one-time deals.
In fact, seed companies make this same argument to their farmer customers. Your product knowledge, local expertise, responsive customer service, and willingness to stand behind your product mean your higher price is justified because it delivers much more value to a farmer than seed sold at the bottom of the market.
My temu.com watch band was cheaper because it was made with low-quality materials and had design shortcuts that I didn’t even think about. Those unknown shortcuts behind the “great” offer could end up being incredibly expensive and disruptive to your business. Some examples are: running with less labor, using older equipment, eliminating double-checks and processes, selecting lower quality growers and fields, holding back information, and advancing germplasm that is unproven or its performance is overpromised.
It may be counter-intuitive, but in this era of challenged margins, expectations are higher than ever. This means that seed companies and farmers can’t absorb any risk from the cheap options and need to work with trusted, long-term partners that do it right. Maybe that cheap deal works out the first time, but over the long-term, the offer that looks “too good to be true” will prove itself to be just that.
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