Lead Hikvision Ezviz Direct-to-Customer Sales

Will the payoff be one gigantic DDOS attack in a few years?

Or a million small local ones, taking everyone offline.

This is the future - Made by Hikvision , Sold by Hikvision , installed by Hikvision.

Distributors - what are they ?

Jon, where the problem comes in as follows:

1. Customer A wants cameras installed. Customer A receives a quote from a qualified integrator for Axis M series cameras. For a couple thousand less Customer A could go with some Lorex camera system and DIY. At that point the customer is making a decision as to whether the qualified integrator product is worth the cost differential. They may, and likely will still go with Costco special but even post-DIY install there will be some doubt in the mind of Customer A.

2. Customer B receives a quote for rebranded Hikvision cameras from a qualified integrator who insists the low price and quality combo can't be beat. Customer B then sees the Hikvision kit on a Walmart shelf for 1/3 the price of the install. It's the same cameras though, right?

Under option 2 the position is less defensible. The integrator has to default to "our install quality is greater than DIY" arguments. At a certain point it is likely that a customer will realize that it doesn't take an artisan to make what essentially amounts to long patch cables reliably.

I agree that there are definite differences between Ezviz and the pro Hikvision systems, the lack of the web interface being one of them. It makes fine configuration difficult, as you have to use the local interface, since most parameters aren't exposed directly in EZVIZ.

However, I'd say that that suits the market it's intended for, home and SMB DIYers, as many/most would get lost in menus and don't know how different options impact their video, anyway. There are a lot of consumer/DIY focused systems that don't give these options, allow direct access to bitrate, DNR, gain, etc., as it adds confusion for less experienced users.

Also, I haven't seen stability issues in using P2P cloud connections, whether that's Ezviz, Dahua, Nest, Canary, or other platforms. If anything, it has seemed simpler to deal with. Requiring port forwarding in DIY-centric systems is difficult, as many users again simply don't know what they're doing.

At Amazon, "by company xxxx" mainly refer to product manufacturer. The actual seller is shown after "Sold by....."

Grossly overcharging? So what's an acceptable profit margin? Do you like the race to the bottom? Are we all supposed to only sell cameras at China's pricing? Last we checked this is not just a subsistence industry.

Do you understand all the effort that goes into bringing products from overseas, selling them, supporting them, and installing them?

Hikvision, as much as they ARE my competition, the product itself is standard. Not extraordinary, sometimes pretty damn good, but certainly not substandard across the board. There's MUCH much worse quality wise. Have you heard of Longse? I mean seriously.

Hik has always been ready to screw anyone and everyone over for market share, that's for sure. However, it's not because Hikvision's products are garbage that everyone's complaining. If they were just another cookie-cutter waste product manufacturer, then we could easily write them off. It's because they have tons of money from being government sponsored and they don't care that they're only making less than 20% profit all for the sake of market share AND their products can't be so easily dismissed by the security industry as nothing more than just a joke.

This sucks for EVERYONE! If we are going to beat our competition, we have to give them the respect level they deserve at the same time as a formidable product line that we have to contend with at more than just the price level. Their products follow a rapid pace of development and they can hang with the just about everything else in the industry. Never discount that.

Now, back to the grossly overcharging thing. Are you accusing the security industry of overvaluing themselves? Members of IPVM? Are you suggesting that somehow we're bleeding people by selling at the prices we sell and that support for these products is cost free to us?