Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/07/14
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]The idea of getting the dealers to help us with a price list is quite nice but other-worldly. Selling Leica is a priority with only a small number of Leica dealers. Most dealers do not stock Leica and their annual orders are less than $5,000, a pittance compared to their Nikon P&S sales and the like. Leica doesn't like this, but the modern approach to running a camera store is to "sell cheap", an ultimately self-limiting policy of no great brilliance. Dealers will not 'warehouse' new Leica gear the way they did in the 1950's or 1960's. Leica recently tried to lift the dealerships for stores selling less than, I recall, $5,000 -- but it backfired, as the dealers simply told 'em to go ahead, and Leica had to retreat. Further, Leica can not do more than set the minimum advertised price, or MAP. They have no control over what a dealer will sell his wares for. That battle was fought, mightily, by the manufacturers in the early 1950's, when the makers and small stores were ambushed by the large NY stores and the Federal Government, and the manufacturers lost, completely. Anti-trust stripped them of their power to set any selling prices at all. And the MAP is now under attack: the Feds are investigating several companies on their MAP policies and may decide that even this can't be tolerated. (And, no, I don't LIKE this Federal bureaucracy -- but it's what we Free Americans are forced to put up with.) The long and short is that a dealer will charge what the market will bear and will charge a lower price to a regular customer or a large-volume buyer than to an unknown. Blind calls to dealers will probably either be ignored or will generate ridiculous prices. If any of us have good contacts with good Leica dealers, then the plan may work -- but otherwise, I believe it's doomed to failure. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!