In the past 7 days we’ve seen a surge of government solicitations issued for aviation headsets or communication headsets all coming from the DLA Land and Maritime, Active devices division. In fact over 3,200 headsets have been requested, with an average cost of over $400.00 each could mean close to 1.3 Million dollars of sales to the contract awardees who win them.
Many situations can cause an increase in number of solicitations you see such as the demand of a product has increased, a vendor has contract delivery issues, or a sole source item is no longer available. Products designated as “sole source” (one supplier) can be problematic especially when there is only one manufacturer. Savvy government contractors typically seek out sole source opportunities as they provide competition to government buyers and possibly better products for the end user. Many small businesses and start-up companies increase their sales by searching for sole source government contracting opportunities.
Between May 3rd and May 10th 2018 DLA posted nine (9) solicitations requesting over 3,200 headsets from 4 different manufacturers. These products are listed as “Commercial off-the-shelf items” and that any alternate offerors provide data packages for evaluation. So as it looks the government is actively searching for new manufacturers of headsets. The majority of the requested headsets are currently manufactured by the David Clark Company.
The top 3 headset manufacturers selling to the US Military are Roanwell headsets (CAGE code 82872), Plantronics headsets, (CAGE 22447), and David Clark headsets (CAGE 71483).
Procurement history data shows that theses headsets used by the Defense Department (DoD) are purchased on a regular basis and that many of them are sole source. These Government solicitations posted the requests under the title “Headset – Microphone” or “Headset, Electrical” as that’s the name of the NSNs associated to the items. Most of the NSNs for headsets are listed as throw away items, when they fail they’re not repaired and new ones are purchased. Noise canceling headsets, pilot headsets or general communication headsets are used everywhere from helicopters to aircraft by everyone.
These solicitations are currently open for bid and can be found at www.bidlink.net or directly on the government website which they were posted on.
Reverse engineering and source approval are ways to increase your government sales. Successful government contractors look at the word sole source as an opportunity.
BidLink is an industry leader in providing government solicitations and procurement data which has been used by DoD and Commercial industries for the past 18 years.
Comments? Contact Jim at jimnews@bidlink.net
www.bidlink.net – 866-226-4488
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