|
I find the first hand information very interesting; it answers some questions I had.
I've often wondered what type of dealer agreements a store might have had & whether any allowed an exclusive area, or forbid the shop from selling other brands. I've seen ads for some old TV shops that listed so many brands I have to wonder how they had room for even one of each!
Our hometown TV shop sold GE & Zenith c.1980 when my dad decided to buy a new console. He really wanted a Zenith but the owner talked him into the General. I've often wondered if this had to do with profit margin? It's hard to imagine any other advantage. A few years later he went GE only, until adding RCA after the buyout. Later on he advertised as a GE "stocking dealer". He did have a decent size storage area added on, and moved a lot of appliances. Maybe this got him a better deal? Just before he exited the TV business I was shopping for a VCR and really wanted to give the business to him (as he was a good customer of mine). He had a big stack of RCA's for something like $189 while the same model (perhaps slightly watered down) was $129 at Wally World. I remember when I pulled out my credit card to pay the owner's son pulled out his calculator to see if he had enough markup to absorb the card fee! I had to wonder why he didn't just drive over to Wal*Mart and buy them? I'm thinking it would have been cheaper and he wouldn't have to buy such a volume.
Eventually Lowes started stealing away his lucrative business of selling all the major appliances to new homebuilders, so he retired.
__________________
Bryan
|