20% 0ff new Collings, Waterloo & Eastman at Bernunzio

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by gmax150

Just thought I'd share this. Got an email from Bernunzio this morning saying that they are giving 20% discounts on new Collings, Waterloo and Eastman guitars. Seems a good deal on Collings.

Hi, there certainly seem to be some Eastmans and Gibsons in the sale but no Collings or Waterloo.

There IS one Collings - OM2h and aa Waterloo reduced but they are both used.

[Glob]

Originally Posted by onaclearday

I know this is quite an old topic, but I just don't get it. If Collings is sooo worried about the price the dealers sell their instruments why don't they just increase the dealer price and keep the MAP policy in place. So that dealers can't afford to offer discounts. I see things like this: if dealers are inclined to discount it's because they don't sell as much with the price Collings wants, and because buyers don't think they should pay that much. If the delaers afford to sell at a discounted price it means that Collings wants to artificially and might I add greedily pump up the cost, so that their already expensive instruments seem (and are) even more expensive.

If you do that, you're effectively squeezing my revenues. In which case, I have no incentive to carry your brand since I can't compensate on volume. The dealership model - be it cars or guitars - has to give vendors the ability to set selling prices to adjust to demand. Otherwise, you're just sitting on inventory which creates cash flow issues and so on. It's obviously feasible for high end products - as long as you have other products to churn out, but there's always a point when something's gotta give.

The issue today in my view is that prices for high end instruments are forever increasing, as is the number of players in the market. All good until the pandemic, but it's now absolutely obvious that:
1 - the supply will outstrip the demand at some point and the dealers are carrying the inventory risk if they cannot sell - this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that manufacturer can't produce as much now though, but I wouldn't want to have too much crap carrying dust in my shop...
2 - there is a massive gap in the ~$2000 / $3000 range for well made guitars - think Eastman made in the US or EU - because dealers can't discount stock, that will play in the hands of the big guys like Martin, Taylor, etc. Once you lose market share though... Hard to get that back.

There will be manufacturers' casualty soon me think. Just bought a second hand Boucher, because even if I could afford my dream preston thompson, I don't know what the future will be like and I need to be more conservative. The pool of people will high level of disposable income will reduce.

And there will be plenty of dealers' closing down if the pain continues and they can't generate cash flow.