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In Reply to: Received invitation letter from BMW Canada ... posted by Baden Smith aka Zed3.Canada on August 05, 2001 at 18:53:45:
An observation. Back early in my life, when I was a manager of an Allied Radio Shack Store (sigh) there was fierce competition in our city for the mid-priced stereo market. Chain stores Allied Radio Shack and Team Electronics had to compete with half a dozen private stereo dealers. Team sold last year's models at great prices, Allied Radio sold almost exclusively house branded equipment made by major manufacturers...and both had to compete with small privately owned shops carrying latest Brand Name equipment.
One private retailer -- THE STEREO SHOP -- was bigger than all the other private stores, and did the lion's share of the business. He had far more inventory than the others, and the best brand names. His golden goose was the speaker line from Advent. Good speakers, better than a lot of the others, but not el supremo. However, he spent more in advertising than some of the other shops took in in sales.
His big comparo promo was hyped to who wouldn't have it..."Stereo Speaker Showdown!" He had managed to get speakers that each of the other stores -- including mine -- sold for roughly the same price as his primo Advent pair. He was setting up all the speakers, and was going to run identical programming through each pair, so his customers could HEAR that his were the best.
His toughest competition was the Bose 901 direct/reflecting speaker pair with equalizer box. Head and shoulders better than his speakers...so he set them up in the middle of a room. (Since 8 of the 9 speakers in the Bose enclosure pointed backwards, these speakers needed to be against a wall!) Of course they sounded tinny. But far worse, two of the competitor's speaker pairs sounded so bad that they demanded an examination, and this dealer had placed PUTTY on the cones, to deaden them!!!
Publicity was horrific, and several months later he sold out...and left town to set up business somewhere else.
Moral of the story...in ANY comparo, a level playing field is essential...and ethical competitors couldn't hurt.
Terry
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