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Revisiting the Technics petition and poll one last time

Mark Settle·
TurntablesBlog

technics petition poll balance

There has been a good deal of turntable based activity in the pages of DJWORX over the last fortnight. So before we get back to the wider DJ scene, I just wanted to revisit the poll that we ran alongside the Technics petition story. With over 1000 responses, it gives a non-scientific but reasonably representative sample that does show that support for the return of the brand is split.

THE RESULTS

technics petition

Breaking this down into broader strokes:

  • Combined Yes votes number 37%, just over one third.
  • Combined Maybe votes come in at 48%, almost half.
  • Pure No votes number 11%. This includes 3% of the “other” votes who said they already have them. My mistake for not adding that as an option.

There are many ways to massage statistics to make them look better or worse (combine yes + maybes, maybe nots and nos etc) but I feel that yes, maybe, and no offers a pretty clear breakdown of feeling. So it’s not an overwhelming wave of support for the return of  the beloved Technics brand. A lot of yes love, but much of it is conditional with a good deal of negativity too.

APPLYING THIS TO THE TECHNICS PETITION

So if we apply this to the petition numbers – it currently stands at a little over 17K of the 25K needed. So let’s make the not-unreasonable assumption that it will get the full 25K, thus 9250 people will allegedly absolutely buy them (safe to assume a pair), meaning that 18.5k turntables will be bought. For reference, that’s probably more than they sold in the last few years of the product.

So if Panasonic do gear up and make say 20K fresh Technics turntables, the stats indicate that they’ll all be sold, especially if the cost is sane as this will capture the maybes who were price-dependent. If the turntable was updated so that the fixed cables were made to be removable, then that would get a few more yeses too.

THE REALITY

There is however a huge difference between people signing a petition and really getting behind a cause to actually ponying up the cash to get a pair. The intention is there — now it’s time to see how many people are actually serious about it. The idea of using Kickstarter could be the way to go, as it allows people to take the next step of putting their money where their mouth is, and gives Panasonic some idea of more realistic numbers too without having to take the money or commit.

We’ll keep on monitoring progress on this campaign and let you know if anything develops.