X-Message-Number: 13939 Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 16:44:46 -0500 From: david pizer <> Subject: The SINGLE Cause of Alcor's Membership Decline Identified - at Ever since Saul Kent brought the grave matter of the decline of cryonics to our attention, I have been trying to find the main cause and how to present evidence that it was the cause. I consider growth as the single most important thing we can do at this time to protect our present patients. As most of us sometimes do, I had an "educated" hunch as to what the cause was. My hunch was that the main cause of the slow down in cryonics growth was the implementation of the Alcor Suspension Pricing that was done in or around 1993. At that time I was on the board and I was the only director to vote against it, and for good reason. The high costs Alcor would charge would cut into the volume so badly, that the loss of volume (even at lower prices) would cost Alcor more net money (money that is left for Alcor after expenses) than the higher prices (on what would become lower volume) would generate. Not only would we lose potential members, not only would good people die and not get frozen, but Alcor would suffer in net finances. It was in a post from Mathew Sullivan that the revealing figures hit me that my hunch had been right! Alcor was growing like crazy through 1992. Then in 1993 about the time Alcor came up with this bad plan that growth came to a screaching halt! After that time, Alcor got into a situation where they were always tight on money. Here are Mathew's figures again, you be the judge: >Year/Members/Added/% Increase >1984/33/11/33.3 >1985/44/27/61.4 >1986/71/14/19.7 >1987/85/15/17.6 >1988/100/14/14.0 >1989/114/36/31.6 >1990/150/50/33.3 >1991/200/90/45.0 >1992/290/59/20.3 1993 Alcor implements its present pricing policy >1993/349/25/7.2 >1994/374/-14/-3.7 >1995/360/16/4.4 >1996/376/25/6.6 >1997/401/28/7.0 >1998/429/22/5.1 >1999/451/37/8.2 >2000/488 I think this should give some degree of proof that the pricing plan Alcor adopted in 1993 is the cause of the halt in growth. In addition I will add, that if Alcor had *lowered* the costs in 1993 instead of adopting this plan, perhaps we would be well on the way to the projected 4,000 members and 400 patients in just a few years that the board felt we were on track to hit back in 1993. It is not too late to recover. All Alcor has to do is adopt a more reasonable price plan and the business will follow. This will make Alcor more net money in two proven ways: (1) The increased volume (even at much lower prices) will help to generate more net money at the end of each year; (2) The increased volume of members and suspensions will create an economy of scales that will lower Alcor's present costs. In addition to posting this on CryoNet for discussion, I will copy the Alcor Board so that they may consider this. Dave Pizer Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=13939