Henry is flying to Sydney on July 14. Its his first international trip since late 2023. We been doing everything on video calls and the customers been patient but you can feel the gap when you havent shaken hands with someone in two years.
The main meeting is with a infrastructure contractor that does roadwork and tunnel jobs across New South Wales. They been buying from a Korean brand for 6 years and the contact, a procurement director, reached out to Henry in March after seeing our tripod floodlights at a trade fair in Melbourne.
The order size we are talking about is significant. First year they project maybe 1,200 to 1,800 units across three product lines. At our average price thats $640,000 to $960,000 USD. For our factory of 92 people thats not small.
Henry has been preparing for weeks. He printed product binders, made a sample case with 6 units he can demo, and practiced the price ladder with me three times. The contractor wants pricing in 4 tiers based on volume. Our standard is 3 tiers. Henry is willing to add the 4th if it gets the deal.
One thing we argued about is the warranty. They want 36 months on the tripod heads. Our standard is 24. The 21700 cells degrade enough by month 30 that we are nervous offering 36 across the board. Brad suggested a hybrid, 24 month full and 12 month parts-only, with replacement cells at cost. I think we go with that.
Henrys flight is 11 hours and he hates flying. Hes booking the trip with a 2 day buffer on each side so he can recover and visit two smaller customers in the same Sydney suburb. Brad set up dinner with the procurement director on the second night, casual, his wife is coming.
If this lands it changes our 2026 production plan. We would need to add a second assembly line for tripods. Lao Wang who runs production already drew up the layout on the back of a packing list.
