I disagree. IMO there's good enough reason for Meguiars to have what may seem like overlapping products, but it's not really quite so simple: For example, everything in the Mirror Glaze line can't really be compared or overlap any other similar product whether it be compound or whatever because the Mirror Glaze line is made to be body shop safe for professional use.
Meanwhile their Detailers Line serves its own dedicated purpose geared to accommodate the maintanince detailer and D302 is the only polish in that line, a polish almost no 1 ever even mentions, so it sure doesn't deserve to be thought of as overkill if no one seems to know it exists...
Deep Crystal maroon line is kept around for oldtimers and cheapos.
Gold Class for the middle aged.
Ultimate line for the millennials.
Mirror Bright for the people with old souls.
And as far as headlight treatments, they have a light duty, med duty, and heavy duty with sandpaper. I bet the people who use it with success are happy it's a available.
Does Chemical Guys even have professional body shop safe products, let alone a dedicated line to cater to the professional? I think not.
So, what you are describing is what marketing people refer to as a product mix strategy. CG's is a single wide and deep channel while Meguiar's is multiple narrow channels with varying depth. Toyota has Lexus, Nissan has Infiniti, Honda has Acura and Mazda had Amati/Millenia (never happened here, other than a few years of the Mellenia model) where they all created two channels. Meguiar's created a multi-channel product differentiation strategy. In the end these products are all mostly the same in intent and differ slightly in quality and effect.
My original point was the criticism for the overlapping products and I never really considered the quality or effect for this thread. Almost everyone agrees that CG has some very good products, as does Meguiar's, at least almost everyone who has tried at least a few CG products. I use some CG products and I use some Meguiar's products. I'm not sensitive to customer service so much because I only buy from Amazon and if I don't have a choice I use Autogeek. The only reason Autogeek comes in second is the ground shipping from FL to CA is usually a full week or more whereas on Amazon I can usually get everything within 1 or 2 days and in some cases same day using Amazon Prime. The prices at both places are mostly competitive.
The reason why I even took the time to write this thread was because I sensed unfair criticism of CG because their marketing created a perception of inferiority, but not based on product quality or satisfaction. Let's leave price out of this discussion because we are all mostly cost-sensitive and our decisions are often NOT made based on cost comparison. I don't know what the gross profit margin is for these chemicals but I'm guessing it is 80% or more, depending on the packaging and marketing costs and not because of the cost of the ingredients. I just paid a lot of money for Fuzion, not based on how good or effective it was, but because it seems to have a reputation for being easy-on/easy-off mostly positive outcome and I could not find any negative bias in comments other than it is expensive. I'm satisfied with the result and I would never tell friends (who are not into cars) how much I paid for a wax that I use to top a sealer. They will look at me like I'm nuts.
Lastly, I look at detailing (amateur, not professional) as a sickness, but a good sickness, at least from the reference frame of non-detailers. In short, I must be one sick person to spend as much as I do on car care. But, it is a hobby and there are no limits on how much one spends on a hobby. There is a lot of hype, slick marketing and perception manipulation going on. After all, these are just the same set of chemicals being mixed in different ways to make products that mostly do good things for the paint finish on our cars.
