Agreed. I'm not an Echo basher as I use their products and like them, but without a good dealer to back you that 5 year warranty isn't worth the paper its written on.
Efcos a very good rep on here, but suffer from identity crisis (many, many different names, no consumer recognition), nearly non-existent dealer or parts network, an extensive warranty that is even more useless than Echo's 5 year warranty, confusion with the better known Echo name, etc.
One thing you could use is user testimonials. You have a lot of very satisfied customers on here, meaning you have found favor with a much more demanding group than your average chainsaw user. Use that.
Long term reliability is reputed to be excellent. Do a search on here for the long term test results of Efco products. There was one member on here that had put thousands of hours on an Efco 152, as I recall, and he documented it for this website. Seems to me like if you could document a large number of satisfied, discriminating users and a track record of long term reliability, that would go a long way towards marketing your product. You still need a way of getting parts to the users at a competitive cost, and in a timely fashion. I don't think you can compete with the Stihl and Husky dealer networks any time in the near future, so my suggestion is to go the website route.
The parts prices need to be competitive and IPLs, service manuals, etc. readily available to the general public. Stihl has done a very poor job with the latter (high parts prices, high labor rates and closely held access to IPLs), which is why I prefer Husky.
You make a very good product, but that alone won't make your product successful. Just look at Tanaka, they make a good product, too, with a long warranty, but without dealer service or parts support they are still an unknown.
Rep sent.
