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Microcap & Penny Stocks : FRANKLIN TELECOM (FTEL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ted Bunce who wrote (23375)	12/17/1997 12:26:00 PM
From: Pat Garaffa	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 41046

Ted, Sorry for the length of this post - I'm sure most would find this interesting. I was in the city on Friday and stopped by the show. I would have liked to spend more time there but we (my family) were in the city for other reasons and kids weren't allowed in the Internet Show. I ran in for about an hour and was able to quickly stop by a few of the booths. Franklin was a late entry and I spent half an hour looking for them as they did not appear in ANY directory. I finally went to Mecklermedia's managment booth and had someone look up Franklin's booth. I stopped by and spoke with Peter Thornton for a few moments. He was very upbeat and said the phones at headquarters are ringing off the hook. Many small and large companies are looking at the product. If he had his way he would concentrate on the larger players since it takes as much effort to sell larger systems as it does to sell a smaller one. Neil was walking around on stilts! They had a phone or two set up for demo purposes. The booth was very drab - it hardley spoke of their product. It just had a big sign that said Franklin Telecommunications. Their location was way in the back but they did make it to the main floor and they also had a corner booth which offers much more visiblity. I was rushed so I was unable to demo the products of the competetors. I missed IDT but was able to stop by Clarent, Delta 3, Nortel and Vocaltec. Netspeak wasn't there. Vocaltec and Nortel had very nice booths. Vocaltec had old style phone booths set up all over their floor space and the lines to demo the product were 3 or 4 deep at every phone. They also had a live action demo going on with some guy at a podium and a large speaker phone pumped to a loudspeaker. They were making long distance calls to whoever you wanted and they would blast it over the speakers for all to hear. I wasn't able to tell much but the quality didn't sound half bad. Nortel's booth looked good and I grabed some spec sheets. Clarent was in a booth about the same size as FTEL but they were down on the lower floor where there is alot less traffic. There booth was also much brighter and had more personnel. Their product is identical in capabilities. I didn't compare pricing and, unfortunetely, had no time to demo the product. Delta 3 had the only booth worse than FTEL's. My kid's Kool-Aid stand was bigger! All were on the main floor except for Clarent in the basement. I was the only visitor in each of these booths - including FTEL. Vocaltec was the only booth overflowing with people. Marketing pays!! I'm still a firm believer in the FTEL's product quality. Now we need to start doing the proper PR, Marketing and Trade Shows. Quality alone will not be enough. If that were the case we would still be using Betamax (remember??) instead of VHS. If no one knows you're out there - who will buy your products? Vocaltec has the worst quality product that we've discussed and yet their booth was the fanciest and was overflowing with personnel and interested people. Imagine what would happpen if FTEL spent half that on marketing and PR and made up the other half with product quality! Watch out! As the money begins to roll in I am confident Frank & Co. will start diverting a few bucks to do some quality PR and Marketing. Let's get the word out! NSPK, VOCLF and IDTC are constantly popping up in WSJ, CNBC and the trade rags. Netspeak was featured in the New America section of IBD a few weeks back and IDT was presented on CNBC. Our turn will come shortly and with the right mix of product and PR we will light the world on fire! - Pat