Why Do OEMs Lie? (Looking At You ENS, LTS, IC Realtime)

My problem is I don’t even want to waste the time on these people. As a matter of professional courtesy I try to give every sales person the chance to make their pitch, even if I know I won’t be interested. There are exceptions for when I truly don’t have time, and ultimately it is premised on the idea of mutual respect. I respect you enough to listen and give you a chance, you respect me enough not not insult my intelligence.

This is true to a point. There are companies out there that design their products and farm out the production of their product to manufacturing facilities that just build it to their spec. / design. This is a common practice in the industry. there are also manufacturers that may be very good at specific things but in order to have a complete line to sell a customer they farm some pieces out. Example they may make great cameras but never got into manufacturing recorders or storage, so they take a well know OEM of the product hey need to complete their offering and have it labeled as theirs. You can look at this as a negative or a positive. OEM manufactures typically take responsibility for the product they sell you even if it is an OEM and not strictly their product. I don't think you will find any single manufacturer that offers Security Panels, Sensors, Fire, Access Control, and all components of a video system. But there are a few that offer a line that complete. Some of it is OEM, and some of it is theirs. Some of it is Theirs and they actually do the manufacturing, while some of it is theirs and they farm out the production to a 2rd party. Its still their design just not their employees physically assembling the product. If the Manufacturer bought one of these 3rd party production facilities, and the only thing they changed was they put their name on the building would that really make a difference to you as the integrator? I'm Joes security and I am a manufacturer. I have personally designed the panels, and sensors I sell as well as the cameras. I hire 3 production companies to assemble my designs. So am I an OEM to you? If yes, and I buy those 3 production facilities and put Joes security on the sign, am I an OEM to you now? If I decide I want to now sell recorders, because all my camera customers ask for recorders, and I have an OEM put my name on them, am I now someone you don't want to buy from? If I then buy that OEM company and put my name on the sign, does that mean i'm no longer an OEM?, Remember I didn't design the recorders or change anything but the badging on the equipment.  Its simple to throw a company under the bus for OEM, but, its a more complex decision than many of these comments make it out to be. The recent Hik, Dahua debacle has much more to it than a ban for US government use. I hope everyone in our industry is following closely ALL the reasons that this is coming to pass.

Gave you an informative and a funny... and threw an agree on there too for good measure.

Now I am gonna have that with a thick accident stuck in my head over the weekend: “I have better contact in China than you”

If you curse someone out in Chinese, do it in Cantonese. Mandarin is too proper and boring for that sh*t.

My personal favorite:
仆街冚家鏟 - "Puk gai ham gaa caan (soft c like in ciao)"

I'll let you guys learn what that means on your own.

Out of curiousity, why LTS over the usual ADI/Anixter? I know the oem versions tend to be cheaper, but if you join the dealer programs and do decent volume you can get the name brand with better warranty and take advantage of ADIs longer terms? Not a fan of the big box stores, but at least they are impartial and sometimes better informed.

Or go with a real distributor, someone regional, and work to help each other. You would be surprised at how much some of these companies are willing to do to help you out. Working late, early, weekends... heck some of them will go to such lengths as to get you same day delivery even if they have to throw it in the back of an Uber if they have to. No joke, true story.

Also if you prefer the white label/brandless units you can find them all over. In fact there is this one guy named Nelly... well Nelson but you knkw what I mean ;)

Their own 'firmware' is just a reskin of Dahua with their own model numbers. No special sauce added and no less insecure.

ICR may use slightly modified firmware but it's still crap.  The whole UI is crap and hard to figure out what's what, and to get support you have to put a message up on their support forum.  Or you can wait a few days for a callback after you've left the site of course.  The "analytics" are a joke, the motion sensing alarms for dumb stuff the sun patterns on the building moving though the day.  And then there's the security issue.

Oh, and the sales reps are extremely persistent liars.  

Had numerous calls from Hik people in the past two months or so wanting to see if they could help on any projects.  The answer was no.  He seemed resigned.

LOL

I was at an event and the rep was talking about this dome camera that was stainless steel, heavy duty, designed for use in marine/saltwater applications, etc. I asked if the camera was explosion proof and he looked at me like I was stupid and said he didn't know of any camera that could survive an explosion. 

I have to agree, that the lies do give them the opportunity to increase their margins but so would extreme value add. If they focused on doing more to help their clients like trainings, marketing assistance, extended tech support hours, weekend pickups, etc they could still increase their margins legitimately. Lieing and taking advantage of people is short sighted and makes for terrible business.

As for disclosure I think that would be ideal, but I would be happy if they just dropped the act and cut the BS. My new slogan is “Be like Nelly”!

Even if that was the case, they should not lie about being the manufacturer. Also when confronted by the truth, digging a deeper hole by continuing to lie is just foolish. Just say “private label” and “wholesale/resale” etc.

My understanding is that the non-disclosure aspect is almost always required / enforced by the relabeler / pretend manufacturer.

The company actually making the equipment would generally love to be able to publicize their pretend manufacturer customers who are often much better-known brands.

If there was an actual contract. In my experience there is not. Even if there is a contract chances are that it is only enforceable in China. Also, chances are the Chinese manufacturer will breach their own NDA when stealing your largest customer, despite importing and building that brand for them, ha!

China might be changing these days, but when we first brought Hik and Dahua into America there wasn't a lot of "professional" or "corporate" style "partnerships" between the manufacturer and the distributors importing their product.

Go figure...

I think this is a different topic. It is a good one. 

We do not own our monitoring center. Running an installation and servicing alarm company and running a monitoring center are two different beasts when done correctly. I know some companies have their centers. I think that's a mistake to keep their alarm company and monitoring center under the same umbrella. If we had a million accounts, I would consider opening a monitoring center. 

It's also the same us selling alarm equipment. Most installers don't disclose that they're buying equipment from a distributor and just reselling it. Everything is private labeled now. We private label everything from door contacts to security systems to motion detectors to card readers on access control to our apps on smartphones. 

I couldn't agree with you more Daniel!

We are an alarm company that does not own our own central, and I am not ashamed to admit it. When a potential client asks me if we are doing the monitoring, I say "We have a triple redundancy monitoring company that we contract with to provide 24/7 service to our clients." If asked specifically who, I tell them: CMS.

I honestly don't see the point in trying to pretend to be something I am not. Besides it being morally reprehensible, sooner or later it always comes back to bite you in the butt.