Digital Image Studio wrote: >I agree with what you say in principle but I think that a lot has to >be blamed on the preferential treatments that larger retailers receive >from distributors. I recall some years ago when I ran my own business >often big box retailers would have pallets of product (on consignment) >when for the remainder of us there was no stock available and then >without the advantage of delayed payments.
My friend who owned the now-defunct camera shop where I worked is currently a department manager at a Target store. After seeing how the whole operation works, his observation is that his camera shop "never stood a fscking chance". The big box chains can buy in enormous volume, and benefit from the economy of scale. But, thanks to the capabilities of network-accessible databases and a highly-organized inventory system, the individual stores can order and stock a bare minimum of items. If they only sell one Rebel-D (for example) a week, they'll just keep one on the shelf. When it sells, they make a request to the mother ship and have a replacement usually the next day. To the retailer, this is the best of both worlds. Of course, the consumer still gets to deal with a salesdroid who doesn't know his aperture from a hole in the ground... -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
