I got an email last week from Motocaddy announcing its new laser rangefinder, the PRO 5000. It looks like a perfectly good rangefinder: an OLED display, the all-important tilt function and a rechargeable battery. And the $249 price tag is pretty sweet.
When I suggested an article about it, my editor’s comment was, “Do we really need another $249 meter?”
Sorry, boss, but that’s the wrong question. You should have asked, “Why would Motocaddy, or anyone else for that matter, launch something that is essentially a ‘me-too’ product?”
It turns out there are many reasons.
In the manufacturing world, this me-too concept goes by a different two-word name. It’s called “buy-sell”. You buy it from the people who make it, put your name on it, and then sell it under your umbrella.
Motocaddy designs and sells some of the best electric boxes on the planet. With this new spacer, Motocaddy is likely to follow a different script. After the company decided to add a rangefinder to its portfolio, it sourced one from an Asian manufacturer.
After customizing features, appearance and branding,prestoMotocaddy is in the distance business.
Name an industry, any industry, and you’ll find buy-sell products. While the benefits to the OEM are significant (which we’ll discuss), there are many advantages for the consumer, albeit with one or two unintended consequences.
Why do OEMs do this?
“Me-too” is a classic follower strategy. It’s a low-risk way to enter an attractive market that may be outside your core competency. With minimal investment, you can offer a product with similar features, brand-based differentiation and attractive pricing.
Innovation is expensive. In the rangefinder world, a Garmin or a Bushnell with all the latest technology will command the highest prices. Me-too products will have minimal new technology and will generally occupy the lower half of the market in terms of prices.
In contrast, the buy-sell model will also have a lower margin. Since there is minimal R&D and overall investment, anything an OEM does on that product will be gravy anyway.
This is really why an OEM would go this route. It’s a low-cost, low-risk effort to capture a piece of a profitable market. Market pioneers have already educated the market, created demand and done all the heavy lifting. They have, in a sense, created the market and created brand equity.
The me-too OEM, as a follower, can benefit from the pioneer’s hard work and ride the wave without paying the costs of innovation and market development upfront. It’s easy market penetration and increases your top and bottom lines with minimal risk and investment.
Many other benefits
When shopping online, have you ever added an item or two to your order just to hit the free shipping threshold? The same thing happens in business. An OEM will add some me-too products to its offerings as potential add-ons so retailers can achieve tiers of free shipping or even better volume-based discounts.
The OEM idea is, “Hey, they’re buying this stuff anyway, so why not buy some of it from us?” The idea of ​​the retailer is, “Hey, we’re selling this stuff anyway, so why not get the best deal we can?”
To the retailer, an item such as a range finder represents nothing more than a product in a box. Clubs aside, the retailer’s job is to sell a box. In the big picture, it doesn’t really matter what’s in the box, as long as the quality matches the asking price. If they can make a few more bucks selling the add-on box, that’s a win.
The me-too model has other advantages. Although the product may also be me, an OEM can leverage its own brand strength and brand by adding small functional enhancements to differentiate the product. Furthermore, in a fast-moving market segment like golf technology, an OEM can quickly jump into the fray. This allows them to capitalize on a trend while avoiding being labeled as “outdated.”
Are there weaknesses?
Of course there is. There are always downsides.
While me-too products give OEMs easy access to markets they’ve been missing, they can’t expect to sell at premium prices. This means they also cannot expect to extract premium margins. As the market is flooded with products from a single category, consumers can become overwhelmed with choice. At that point, the easiest way for consumers is to consider that product category as a commodity, where there is no measurable or visible difference. If the consumer is unable or unwilling to differentiate, price becomes the deciding factor. Granted, there may not be much difference other than price, but once a market sees a product as a commodity, margins for OEMs can erode further.
With me-too products, OEMs are acting as the final middleman (you could argue that direct-to-consumer brands are nothing more than middlemen, but that’s a topic for another day). For an OEM that wants to portray itself as a leader or an innovator in other product categories, adding too many me-too products can be detrimental to its brand.
Another downside is potential market saturation, which leads to comments like my editor asking if we really need another $249 meter. In a saturated market, differentiation is more difficult and, potentially, more expensive. That could eat into those thin profit margins even more.
Are there benefits to the consumer?
To directly answer my boss’s question, once you have A $249 range finder on the market, you really don’tneeda second one. Need, however, is not the deciding factor. Brands like broad product offerings because, as we mentioned, if a customer is going to buy something, it might as well come from us.
Provided, of course, we make a buck for it.
After all, competition is good for consumers. First-to-market innovators must cover development costs in their prices. However, once these costs are covered and you’re no longer the only game in town, the me-too crowd gathers like a school of piranha, which benefits the consumer in two ways.
First, it offers lower-priced alternatives to the product in question. Second, and less obviously, it encourages those first-to-market innovators to innovate something new. It could be new technology, new features, new sizes or new styling. Adding something meaningful to the category re-establishes that brand as a leader and creates a new, higher-priced (higher-margin) model.
If you’ve ever wondered why OEMs keep coming out with new products, this is why.
And if you want a case study on the above concept, keep an eye on what happens with Mileseey GenePro G1 Range Finderwhich features a built-in GPS display and other great features. When it was released this year, it sold for $499. You can buy one now for $399.
We’ll be anxious to see what Mileseey has in store for 2026, not to mention when the me-too versions might hit the market.
There is also a downside for consumers
While choices are great, too many choices can be overwhelming. In her book,Cheap: The high cost of discount cultureBoston University professor Ellen Ruppel Shell says that too many options, including many of low quality, make it harder for consumers to evaluate what’s worth buying.
This leads to what is known as the “paradox of choice”. Consumers can get what they want (a low price), without getting what they really need (a good quality product that will last). Ultimately, consumers may become consumed by a form of cognitive dissonance where they will rationalize a poor choice, aggressively challenge negative reviews, or dismiss differences and innovations as “marketing nonsense.”
After all, too many choices can be paralyzing, leading to decisions based on price. If the price-based decision turns out to be bad, the consumer will have to replace that product with something else. Another round of bad decisions leads to a culture of availability and, even worse, misplaced cynicism.
outcome
Of course, none of this is newMotocaddy PRO 5000 Range Finder and if it is good. Based on what we know about Motocaddy, there’s no doubt PRO 5000 it will perform like a champ and represents an excellent value at $249. Motocaddy has worked hard to develop and protect its brand image, so you can safely assume that the company did its homework before putting its name on the market. PRO 5000.
Therefore, you can add it to the growing list of laser charmers in the $249 price range that will serve you well. Of course, you can find remotes for less, sometimes much less, on Amazon or through other channels.
However, as the old saying goes: You pay your money, you take your chances.
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