After over a decade of marketing Psvane tube brand from its ground zero back in 2009 when they just split off from the state-owned Shuguang tube factory in China, Grant Fidelity have made the decision to discontinue the ENTIRE LINE of Psvane branded vacuum tubes, effective 8pm Mountain Standard Time, Sunday, Feb 7th, 2021.
WHY?
When one supplier tries to restrict their business partner from doing business with another supplier, common sense is that the act is often derived from the fear of losing its existing and future market share.
What can cause one brand losing market share to another new comer? It is often due to its products losing competitiveness on the market – either quality, or price, or both.
No one will waste their breath to suppress another supplier who demonstrates no threat at all – especially when for tube reselling business, it is common practice for a reseller to carry multiple tube brands at the same time to provide a range of options to their customers.
Psvane has been in process of transitioning from supplying for high end tube audio only to include the mass guitar amp consumer market. This transition, we firmly believe, will compromise its high end vacuum tubes quality control. As a matter of fact, we had seen decline of the tube re-testing results of the Psvane stock we have received over the time leading up to this current event, despite of our specified screening parameters. The confirmed test results decline is our main reason to seek Linlai™ brand as additional supplier to maintain our top quality commitment for our high end clientele.
Psvane brand made it clear to Grant Fidelity that Psvane are OK with Grant Fidelity to carry any OTHER brands of tubes originated from China, Russia or other European origins EXCEPT Linlai™ brand due to their ‘personal grudges’ (related to financial interests of how to divide the profit while they were all still with Psvane) with the owners behind the Linlai™ brand. Grant Fidelity is simply NOT allowed to do business with Linlai brand and Psvane brand at the same time.
From Grant Fidelity’s perspective, this dictation from Psvane on whom Grant Fidelity can, or cannot, do business with is absolutely unprofessional and unacceptable. It is a form of supply chain bully in our opinion. The conflicts between Psvane and Linlai shareholders are their internal matters. Grant Fidelity will not tolerate to be forced into a position to pick sides on such internal matters, and certainly will not risk our own inventory supply & quality with it.
It is Grant Fidelity’s absolute principle to ALWAYS operate as an independent business and thrive to hold our high level business ethics and standards. Grant Fidelity work for our customers by providing quality products, at their deserved fair price, and with our best possible service. Grant Fidelity do NOT bend to the interest of any particular tube suppliers, period.
Here is the run-down of the events for those who are curious and care to know:
Psvane act #1: In November 2020, we received written communication from Psvane’s top manager expressing ‘concerns’ of Grant Fidelity carrying their direct competitor – Linlai™ branded vacuum tubes. (If you have read our post about ‘Who is Linlai™‘, you will understand the owners of Linlai™ Tube factory used to be a core part of Psvane team, and exited Psvane due to irreconcilable disagreement on profit sharing resulted from Psvane’s growth. )
Grant Fidelity response #1: Our business is to serve our worldwide customers. Offering product varieties to our customer is our legitimate independent business decision. We expressed our concerns that the action of Psvane trying to interfere free market competition by restricting us from carrying their competition’s products, may not be legit in western business context and we are not willing to participate such a controversial act.
Psvane soon-to-follow act #2: Unilaterally dropped Grant Fidelity’s recognition as ‘top level reseller’ and raised our purchase cost by a ‘very significant’ percentage. (What’s the logic behind this? To revenge because Grant Fidelity didn’t bother to obtain their approval to expand our own product offerings with their competitor’s brand?? )
Grant Fidelity response #2: We agreed to the significant price increase, and plan to adjust our Psvane product mix to focus more on high end tubes, and less on mid-level products to reduce the impact of cost increase, of course all on condition that the high end tubes must come with actual high quality.
Psvane immediate act #3: Unilaterally announced to STOP offering tube ‘selection & screening service’, with the tube testing equipment that is owned by Grant Fidelity, provided and located at Psvane factory since 2009 (Psvane’s beginning of operation) till now, 2021. (What’s the logic of this act? Providing Grant Fidelity non-selected mixed quality of tubes, including those we have clearly set criteria to reject for the past decade, so that Grant Fidelity’s reputation will drop to sell ‘Chinese crap’ as some angry customers have expressed online, when they got sub-quality tubes from Chinese vendors?? )
FYI, in the past 12 months, Grant Fidelity have returned 161 tubes (valued approximately US $20,000+) from the Psvane factory deliveries, EVEN AFTER the screening at the tube factory with our provided test equipment, and AFTER we paid a price premium for the screening and selection service. That is nearly every other day we have identified a defective tube from the supply of ‘so called screened’ Psvane tubes. In the past decade, we have returned thousands of defective tubes all together to the Psvane factory.
Grant Fidelity response #3: We are immediately collecting our valued $5000+ tube testing equipment from Psvane tube factory, rather than leaving it there to collect dust and serve NO quality control purpose it was meant to for us.
Psvane immediate act #4: Sending a written notice to us to request us to STOP selling Psvane branded tubes all together, with reason as ‘We Psvane don’t want our Psvane products to be compared with Linlai™ tubes’.
Grant Fidelity response #4: We refuse to be cyber-censored. Grant Fidelity is NOT a puppet to any supplier. And yes, we indeed found the quality deterioration of Psvane ACME series test results vs. Linlai Global Elite series in the past months when we had both in our inventory, before the current Psvane discontinuation event. Many inferior quality Psvane ACME tubes were mixed into our inbound Psvane factory shipment even after we paid for price premiums. There is also event that Psvane refuses to acknowledge ‘red plating’ is a potential quality problem for the ACME hybrid plate design.
After these 4 rounds of back and forth, I, as owner of Grant Fidelity, have come to clear conclusion that, we, Grant Fidelity, can no longer do business with Psvane. The business interaction with Psvane is no longer acceptable to what we are accustomed to in western business practice. Grant Fidelity will NOT be forced by anyone to limit our supplier to a specific brand only, plus quality dictated by such a brand – It will put our very own hard-earned business reputation at great risk from a Chinese supplier, who apparently do not understand how to deal with competition in a positive manner, and accept the fact of a failed partnership with their ex business partners is their own internal matter, not ours. In our opinion, Psvane’s right action should be focusing on improving products to maintain competitive edge to continue winning new customers. There is nothing to fear from healthy competition, if what Psvane offered is indeed preferred by the market. The very act of Psvane’s attempt to control us is the exact proof that Psvane themselves are lack of confidence in their own products in coming competition.
What NEXT?
Starting immediately as of Jan 26th 8pm Mountain Standard Time, 2021, we are putting a ‘pause’ on all outbound order shipping, when we count inventories to get ready to return ALL Psvane branded tubes back to Psvane factory. The shipping pause will be until Feb 6th, 2021.
From 8pm MST Jan 26th to 8pm MST Feb 7th, customers may still place online orders with us for Psvane tubes that we have in stock and only for those we deem quality meet our criteria. This is to allow customers to have final window of time to purchase Grant Fidelity approved quality tubes. All orders (including ALL brands of tubes, not just Psvane) placed during ‘pause’ time will be packed and shipped by end of Monday Feb 8th, 2021. If any orders are found not possible to be fulfilled due to quality issues we identify at packing phase, you will receive full refund by end of Feb 8th, 2021.
Online orders for ALL Psvane tubes will be PERMANENTLY CLOSED as of Feb 7th 8pm MST, 2021. We will cease to resell any Psvane tubes as of that cut off time.
All past Psvane tube orders and new Psvane tube orders fulfilled by Feb 8th, 2021 will have our tube warranty still honored in the form of either refund (minus shipping cost), or credit to replace with other brands of tubes of buyers’ choice.
We are rolling out more Linlai™ branded tubes VERY SOON- specifically, [Linlai™ Global] branded tubes that Linlai™ factory has embraced with production and quality screening to western standard, but not ‘just another Chinese tube brand’. You will see more [Linlai™ Global] tubes added to our website in the next few weeks. You can also learn more about this new brand from [Linlai™ Global] official English website.
The final words:
Hope this post has answered all the possible guessing and gossiping of why Grant Fidelity cease to resell the entire Psvane line of products. Now you have the entire drama scenes 🙂
All GF Special Edition tubes and Shuguang Treasure tubes will NOT be affected by this event and availability as usual as seen on the website.
Happy Listening,
And enjoy our precious freedom of choice, plus freedom of expressing opinions without any form of online offline censorship,
Rachel @ Grant Fidelity
In response to European customers request while they seek top quality vacuum tubes, we are starting a pilot program for shipping to selected European countries with Import Charges Prepaid, as of Feb 1st, 2024.
