It's not just test procedures.
By "test procedures" I meant end user procedures/manuals/training.
I suspected that's what you meant.
Now imagine that you have multiple such entities, each of which has their own certification standards, that you're selling your product to. You change your product and you'll be dealing with the above for several of them. The expense just isn't worth it, unless the change you're making is for liability reasons.
Fluke can easily do this. It's an ongoing process anyway, you don't just get a certificate and that's it for the next 25 years. They'll be testing parts, submitting samples from every batch they make, etc.
There are likely to be some institutional buyers that would require periodic samples and such. But that's very different from having to go through
recertification. Recertification due to changes you make means you
cannot sell to that customer until the customer has completed their certification process.
And recertification incurs costs on the part of the customer, so the
customer has lots of reasons to be annoyed with you if you unilaterally change things up,
even if the user wouldn't see the changes.
To attract the buyers you're talking about, Fluke would have to price the model competitively with other competitors that are already in the same space, like Brymen.
The Fluke brand could still carry a premium over Brymen - look how many people still come in here and ask if Brymen are any good.
Asking questions isn't anything like plunking down actual money for product. The buyers we're talking about have shown themselves to be price sensitive enough that they
wouldn't consider a Fluke unless it was either price-competitive or offered capabilities the competition lacked. Those buyers look for
value, and quite obviously don't give a flip about reputation. Why do you think they buy
Aneng and
Uni-T meters when they don't need the safety features of the likes of Brymen?
So no, Fluke
cannot charge a premium in
this market and get anything like the kind of sales you think they'd get.
But that means sacrificing one or more of the things I already mentioned, with the associated costs and risks of doing that.
Nope. $100 15B+ quality is fine, all is needs is the missing features. Given that I can buy a $25 meter with those features, it shouldn't cost much to add them.
Support is one of the things I mentioned, and that is what they would have to sacrifice if they don't sacrifice anything else.
That $25 meter might have the features but it doesn't have the same type of design or quality. Remember that quality isn't
just about toughness and all that, it's about longevity as well. That $25 meter may have the features but the way those features are implemented might not last the way Fluke meters do. So Fluke can either sacrifice longevity (particularly in the face of hard use), thus damaging their reputation, or they have to undergo the development and testing expense to ensure proper part selection and proper design around it. And that
adds to the cost.
Ummm... Amprobe's "precision multimeter" line is made by Brymen.
But that's just Amprobe's "precision multimeter". Amprobe has many more meters in its line than just that. And even if Amprobe is sourcing from other manufacturers, so what? It's the
existence of their line that matters here. The point is solely that Amprobe
is the "Fluke" division that offers the meters you pine for.