Monday, January 25, 2010

Competition in Life Science Sales

There are 17 life science suppliers that manufacture Taq Polymerase with another 10 or so that wholesale it.  The prices range from a few cents to dollars per reaction.  My question to you is which company is getting my business?

At the moment my lab buys Taq from Qiagen.  It is by far not the most economical (we could make our own for pennies), so why do we buy it.  I asked around the lab last week as well as emailed a few old lab members.  Turns out we have been buying Qiagen Taq for over 12 years in a row, because 12 years ago a post-doc tested against "several" other companies enzymes.  Qiagen Taq worked the best in our genotyping assay, so we have used it unquestioningly for the last 12 years.  Amazing, we call our selves scientists!

So I suspect that's what you are up against, when you are trying to make and sell a better taq or anything else that has been in use for decades.  Faster Western blot? Wonder why that thing is so hard to sell?

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