Surefire Minimum Advertised Price?

[sunspot]

I have not heard much lately about SF's policy on price control. I did hear about Botach being dropped by SF. Why than does Botach have the new E2e and at the price of $64usd? Is calling it a sale a way around the min price?
BTW, I did buy an E2e but from TTS. I felt safer with him. :> )

 

[DonL]

Botach could be claiming a "sale", for clearance or otherwise. Or, perhaps they're dropping the price since SF already yanked their dealer contract and Botach just wants to get some easy money from their existing stock.

Just my guesses.

 

[sunspot]

I heard that Botach got yanked before the E2e's went to dealers. How did they get them and at a low enough price to profit? As is many times the case, something stinky go'in on and it would Botach as the king stink.

 

[Tombeis]

Could it possibly be that Botach has not been "yanked" by Surefire?

 

[SurefireM6]

Or they could have dealer "friends" that get products for them at dealer prices.

 

[Joe Talmadge]

Here's a case where, Lord help me, I'm rooting for Botach. I understand the reasons for MAPs, but I also like to see someone fight back. If Botach isn't a SureFire dealer anymore, and they can somehow get batches of SureFire lights anyway, there's no reason for them to follow the rules. This isn't an anti-Surefire thing, but MAPs just irritate me.

'course, even this probably isn't enough to get me to place an order with Botach.

Anyway, I've always wondered why there isn't more of this going on, since MAPs are so popular. The internet dealership could set up a different, supposedly-unrelated MAP-conforming dealership. The conforming dealership buys lights, then transfers them at cost to the internet dealership, which them thumbs its nose (or flicks the bird) at the manufacturer and advertises for whatever it damn well pleases. Seems like it would be difficult to tell exactly which conforming dealership was pulling the shenanigans.

Joe

 

[sunspot]

Well said Joe. I also do not like MAP's.
Btw, I am in Killeen, TX visiting. Is there anything to do here? I went to the Alamo but other than that Texas is boring.

 

[SurefireM6]

Imagine you were a dealer spending big bucks advertising and promoting SF products, dedicating a big portion of your website to it. Now imagine people going to your site to look and learn about SF products, only to go to a no name small web dealer who spends no time or money to promoting SF products. They buy from them only after browsing and learning from your site. I think that would irritate you more than MAP policy. Eventually the first company would stop selling SF and in the end the consumer loses out on valuable R&D due to lost revenue by SF. This is how I understand the MAP system.

I like to see people fight back too, but only if the cause is just and if it's legal. Botach or the dealer selling them the lights may be in violation of contractual agreement and thus breaking the law. SF could easily track the serial #s to find the root of the problem.

Would you buy a stereo off the street, knowing it was stolen from someone? Most people wouldn't care about that.....unless they got home to find their stereo stolen.

Keep in mind that this is all speculation about Botach.

 

[Joe Talmadge]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by flexmodem:
Imagine you were a dealer spending big bucks advertising and promoting SF products, dedicating a big portion of your website to it. Now imagine people going to your site to look and learn about SF products, only to go to a no name small web dealer who spends no time or money to promoting SF products. They buy from them only after browsing and learning from your site. I think that would irritate you more than MAP policy. Eventually the first company would stop selling SF and in the end the consumer loses out on valuable R&D due to lost revenue by SF. This is how I understand the MAP system.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I understand your point -- and SureFire's point. I think it is a help that there are B&M stores selling SureFire, and information-packed web-sites, etc. On the other hand, if I'm a dealer, spending a ton on a huge web site, but not making sales, then -- and this is important -- my business model is flawed. There are a lot of things that a retailer with a flawed business model can do, from dropping the line altogether, to figuring out how to make my web site more of a sales generator than an encyclopedia, and there are loads of other things I can do, too. I understand why a retailer who is comfy with his business model might not want to be nimble and change, but as a consumer, that's not my problem. I can think of possible outcomes that would keep retail prices lower (benefiting me), but still leave lots of information around (also benefiting me) -- can you? This is probably a fun discussion in itself.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
I like to see people fight back too, but only if the cause is just and if it's legal. Botach or the dealer selling them the lights may be in violation of contractual agreement and thus breaking the law. SF could easily track the serial #s to find the root of the problem.

Would you buy a stereo off the street, knowing it was stolen from someone? Most people wouldn't care about that.....unless they got home to find their stereo stolen.

Keep in mind that this is all speculation about Botach.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Gotcha on the fact that it should be legal. But with the lack of knowledge of how Botach got their lights, I'd say the stereo analogy is irrelevant. Besides, at the point where SureFire is controlling stock so well that they have so much control as to who gets what, it could be SureFire and not Botach who is making iffy legal moves.

So legality is an area where I'm currently reserving judgement. But I still support the spirit of what Botach is doing, and I hope they do the same to cutlery companies who are enforcing MAPs, providing they found some way to sneak around the law.

Joe

 

[Roy]

I'm not sure how the resale system works now, but when I was younger I had a small Archery business that worked like this:

I bought my goods from manufacturers at 60% of their advertised prices. The markup that I applied was up to me, not my suppliers! But then again my suppliers were not in the retail end of the business so they didn't care what price I sold my goods at.

This is supposed to be a free market socitey! The manufactur setting the retail price smaks of price fixing!

The advantage of shopping on the internet the abality to compare prices! I normaly go for the lowest overall price (price+shipping).

 

[DonL]

I recall when the whole price increase and MAP issue hit the oscillatory rotating ventilation device. Someone here or at SFDB mentioned that a loophole in many similar contract agreements would be for a dealer to simply advertise "Prices too low to list!" since the MAP is based on the minimum advertised price.

Thoughts, comments?

 

[SurefireM6]

I found a local gun shop that still sells at pre-markup prices. Check with your local gn shops and see what you can get.

I think it's best for the end consumer over the long run even if it means paying a little more. If it means more R&D and new products, I'll pay a little more.

"This is supposed to be a free market socitey! The manufactur setting the retail price smaks of price fixing!"

I think your talking about using a monopoly to drive up prices. Price fixing is not against the law. Saturn does it, no haggle pricing.

 

[cave dave]

Remeber MAP is Minumum Advertised Price.

If you have established a relationship with a favorite dealer (internet or otherwise) you could always ask if there is a Law enforcement, military, CPF or all around good customer discount.

The dealers can also get around the MAP by saying such things as Free shipping on all Surefire purchases, or free holster with purchase, etc..

Back when I was big into mountain biking and before the internet caught on lots of Mail order companies had prices "too low to advertise" and it wasn't just a gimick, they had MAP's from the big name brands and that was their way around them.