Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/07/14

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To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: Leica's USA price list
From: Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 22:44:03 -0400

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!