Which shops sell mac's with the 15% discount when a new os / spec comes out?

heggie

Hi, as title says , looking to buy an imac in the near future, with Tiger coming out will they sell the older Panther models off? thanks

Hugh_C

heggie wrote:

Hi, as title says , looking to buy an imac in the near future, with Tiger coming out will they sell the older Panther models off? thanks

probably they'll slip the Tiger installer in the box, but it'll come pre-equipped with Panther till the channel clears. If they don't, then, if you buy slightly before or after Tiger release date, they'll give you Tiger for the price of shipping - ie about 15 yoyyos or something like that.

SouperComputer

models sold within a certain time of the release of Tiger will be offered tiger at basically 10e (cost of disks)

whippet

Apple up-to-date programme

Check out the above link with all the details.

As for the resellers giving 15% discounts on non-tiger machines, not a chance as they don't get any discount from Apple on them and as they are working off 2-4% gross margins they couldn't afford to.

heggie

thats completely untrue, i used to sell them. There is more of a markup than that, granted with the OS they might not get the discount, but the certainly do when a new spec come out, i know that for a fact.

SouperComputer

heggie wrote:

thats completely untrue, i used to sell them. There is more of a markup than that, granted with the OS they might not get the discount, but the certainly do when a new spec come out, i know that for a fact.

how long ago did you sell them?

when I signed the Authorised reseller agreement last year and it was 5% markup on consumer models (ibook, mini) and 7% on professional (G5 Tower, Xserve, powerbook)

This is at apples dicrestion however, what ARD did you get awarded?

heggie

i sold them working in a shop, and my staff discount got me considerably more of a discount that 2-4 %, eg, about 6 mths ago, when the 12" powerbook was about 1820 euro, cost was around 1350, i bought it for 1400, maybe they offer different supply rates to different retailers, but there does seem to be a myth that the resellers are making no money at all from apple. When it came to peripherals however, there was hardly any markup on them.

SouperComputer

hmm, apple do vary the discount alright, depending on location etc. still its only up to a max of 9% under the resllers agreement

maybe the place you worked for subsidsed it, had a staff agreement with apple or (shock horror) ordered demo models (20% discount) for staff.

are the purchase & sale prices that you mentioned ex VAT

heggie

yep, sorry it was 1436 exactly including vat, they wernt ex demos or anything like that, brand new sealed in boxes, put in the order myself from apple.

whippet

An authorised appler reseller makes about €15 margin on a mac mini, about €45 on a ibook and on G5 towers about €60 for the entry level. Fact.

there are other type of marketing rebates that the resellers can get from apple, but these are to cover expenses of these activities.

No apple reseller could survive selling apple alone and why the traditional mac resellers have more or less walked away from the retail end of things.

heggie

thats 100% untrue, u are talking out of your ****

heggie

thats more expensive than the education discount, are you saying they sell below cost to students ?

SouperComputer

whippet wrote:

An authorised appler reseller makes about €15 margin on a mac mini, about €45 on a ibook and on G5 towers about €60 for the entry level. Fact.

there are other type of marketing rebates that the resellers can get from apple, but these are to cover expenses of these activities.

No apple reseller could survive selling apple alone and why the traditional mac resellers have more or less walked away from the retail end of things.

sounds like you need to talk with apple and negotiate a better deal! You should be at least making 24 euro on the mini, not counting shipping of course.

for the student discount IIRC, apple reimburse the retailer for the 15%. Although its not worth the hassle for the retailer. generally i would get customers to buy from apples website for the student discount.

i agree its impossible for a retailer to work selling apple alone.

Speaking of margin, Apple reported a gross margin of 28% last year. Not bad, but im sure the ipod probably counted for most of it

whippet

apple part no: M9686B/A DAC (dealer price) is €408, ALP (list price) is €421 - this is a mac mini 1.25.

sales to ed customers is indeed below the dealer cost, and this is claimed back as a rebate. Sales to ed users are generally at cost and of no real value to the reseller unless there is something else sold with the machine.

I am not talking out of any oraface below the waist when I speak about these.

If the margins are what you believe them to be then ask three dealers for a price on a dual 2.5ghz G5, with upgraded harddrive, video card, airport, bluetooth (not memory as they can use 3rd party ram) and see if the price quoted to you varys by more than 20 quid.

And before you scream 'price fixing', check out the price then using 3rd party ram and see the different prices you get.

'sounds like you need to talk with apple and negotiate a better deal! You should be at least making 24 euro on the mini, not counting shipping of course.'

there is no 'doing a deal' with apple, they have set dealer pricing and then you have to claim marketing rebates etc ..

SouperComputer

here is no 'doing a deal' with apple, they have set dealer pricing and then you have to claim marketing rebates etc ..

the reseller discount is subject to apple it ranges from 3-7%. It depends on location, range of goods and other criteria

Apples words BTW, not mine! This is from the reseller agreement I signed a while back.


Having done some sums, it looks like apple only gave you 3% discount.

if you push them they may higher. 5% is the max you will probably get.

We managed to get 5% anyway (not that it makes much of a difference), without any marketing rebates or suchlike, but the shop is on a high-street prominent location.

whippet

they have obviously changed the dealer structure then, I was with one of the 'traditional' resellers, who walked away from retail. I suspect the retail partners like o2 etc.. are now probably getting a slightly higher discount but this would be to compensate for them having to have demo models, showrooms etc. Which would eat at the additional margin.

The crux of the matter is that apple resellers do not really have scope to discount from the apple list pricing. Somewhat bizzare sounding when some one is looking to buy 10 or so dual G5's. Many a time I would have had to show our buy price to customers when they tried to demand '10% off if I buy 5 or more machines'.

I am sceptical as to the potential success of the retail stores, if there is enough value add on sales (ie non-apple stuff) there is a chance, but with the high over-heads and relatively low margins is it a sustainable market?

heggie

i know they cant differ from the list price, that was never a debate, we couldnt sell 1c below the apple set price, but there are 15% discounts authorized from apple when a new spec come out, thats fact, actually think i saw a discounted powerbook in o2 last week.

whippet

that 15% is called price protection and only applies when a newer model is released and allows for the sell through of the remaing stock. They never offer that when new operating systems are announced.

With the new G5's announced today, if they are any previous models left in the channel they will be discounted, again as a rebate from apple.

meep

So, anyone know any stores with stock of the just replaced 2.5GHz Macs? I'd consider one at a 15% discount given that the new 2.7Ghz top end is not much to write home about.

lomb

no business could operate in a high street shop with high street overheads on 5%. rent per day in a small shop in a centre, staff and other costs is about a hundered grand. that means 400 euro a day b4 u see a penny. so at 5% u have to sell 8000 euro a day of apples. thats alot of machines day in day out and u still havent made a penny for urself. it simply cant be done. the only way u could run a business on that is mail order out of an industrial estate with a smal unit and a small shop counter.

eth0_

whippet wrote:

An authorised appler reseller makes about €15 margin on a mac mini, about €45 on a ibook and on G5 towers about €60 for the entry level. Fact.

there are other type of marketing rebates that the resellers can get from apple, but these are to cover expenses of these activities.

No apple reseller could survive selling apple alone and why the traditional mac resellers have more or less walked away from the retail end of things.

Are you serious? How on earth does the apple shop in Dublin manage to stay in business with pish profits like that? Or did they go bust last year?

jank

An authorised appler reseller makes about €15 margin on a mac mini, about €45 on a ibook and on G5 towers about €60 for the entry level

yea right so what they make around 300-400 hundred a day profit in sales and sell below cost to students and teachers!?

Gillo

heggie wrote:

i sold them working in a shop, and my staff discount got me considerably more of a discount that 2-4 %, eg, about 6 mths ago, when the 12" powerbook was about 1820 euro, cost was around 1350, i bought it for 1400, maybe they offer different supply rates to different retailers, but there does seem to be a myth that the resellers are making no money at all from apple. When it came to peripherals however, there was hardly any markup on them.

Alot of manufacturuers, give generous staff discounts. When I worked in large sports shop as a part time job in college we got various discounts, the best was 33% off coast plus VAt. Havign worked in a number of "technology" stores I've seen various suppliers give generous staff discounts, Apple are one of the companies who do this discount scheme.

There are a number of reason;
1; if staff use a product themselves, they know it better and can sell it better
2; the sales staff even though they work for a store are selling a manufacturers products and could be said to be working for the manufacturer in a way
3; nothing endorses a product better then the knowagable sales person stating honestly that they use that product themsleves
4; if you get a discount from a supplier you are gonna be more loyal to that supplier

End result the manufacturer takes a hit by givign a good discount to a few people which in turn increases the sales, end result Apple by takign a lose in giving you a discount will make more profit.

heggie

ok this is getting annoying. it was not a genorous staff discount, I had access to the cost price, and what people are saying about markups here is untrue, unless they are getting screwed by apple.

Gillo

I'm now curious as are most people.

Which reseller did you work for?

heggie

compustore
lol !

Maoltuile

heggie wrote:

Hi, as title says , looking to buy an imac in the near future, with Tiger coming out will they sell the older Panther models off? thanks

G5 iMacs are a nightmare as regards failures - seems to be a problem with the power supply burning out from being left on too long www.macintouch.com I'd wait for the word on the next rev. to see if they fix the problem.

As for the 2.5GHz PowerMac - I've seen reports recently that the water-coolant system is reckoned to only be good for two years on average.

I am _not_ someone to normally diss Apple - Macs usually go forever, unlike Dell/Siemens-Fujitsu/etc. - but these are points of concern.

Maoltuile

heggie wrote:

compustore
lol !

I am sorry to say this, but Compustore were pretty bad, and no-one I knew was sad to see them disappear :-/

Course, O2 and 3G are usually the same, apart from the rare employee who knows about more than iPods ;-)

heggie

i know they were bad, but u guys wernt the target consumer, u have to keep that in mind, anyway it was ran like **** tbh, most of the guys i worked with new their stuff, also (not sayin u'd fit into this category) but we got a lot of bored nerds in lookin to have a chat about benchmarks, and show us their great computing knowledge, it was kinda sad!

Gillo

Apple never gave a deal like that to Compustore Staff. The only way you got something at cost was if the branch manager with Compustore discounted it down to cost at a store level.

Knowing some of the managers there, that may well of happened.

As for Apple discounting to compustore, they didn't especially considering how their account was. It's possible Clarity acting as a reseller for Apple, gave compustore a discount, but I in my experience we only ever bought from clarity at the list price on my products, unless we bought in massive quantities- though we never bought Apple stock in large quantities from Clarity.

whippet

I don't believe that compustore bought from distys, and clarity haven't supplied apple for a long time.

the absence of a retail store in ireland dedicated to mac for years would explain how hard it is to justify an exclusivly mac business. The O2 and 3Gs of this world are making their money on selling mac perhieperals whereby the traditional resellers make their money on support contract and services.

Gillo

They normally didn't, but had the option. I only ever placed orders once or twice, as it generally wasn't the done thing.
but it did happen from time to time

whippet

I had the impression that compustore were given stock by apple and were only invoiced when they sold the equipment, in essence that they didn't really 'hold' stock.

Gillo

Origionally, they did buy the stock from Apple, but in the end the situation changed to what you are saying. I'd left by that stage as it was patently obvious how the company was going.

AFAIK by the end it was that situation with all major brands they carried.

This is getting very off topic though

whippet

but I heard most distys had their heads up and managed some good damage limitation !!

it is off topic !! and by the way new emac and imacs announced along the lines of what macsecret reported.

heggie

gillo wrote:

Apple never gave a deal like that to Compustore Staff. The only way you got something at cost was if the branch manager with Compustore discounted it down to cost at a store level.

I didnt say it was an offer from apple or anyhthin, thats exactly what happened, i got a better discount than staff normally got, but i still saw the cost price, it was still above the cost price!

Gillo

heggie wrote:

I didnt say it was an offer from apple or anyhthin, thats exactly what happened, i got a better discount than staff normally got, but i still saw the cost price, it was still above the cost price!

Which was the same as the Apple list price?
Compustore were notorious for looking for discounts, they didnd't originally plan to take on Apple at all, with a dedicated Apple Store, the Kildare street branch only came about cos they put too much squeeze on another supplier for rebaits. The Kildare street branch was meant to be a Sony Center but they wanted too much money from Sony, they might of tried th esame with Apple, but there is no way Apple would of changed they price, afterall in the grand scheme of things Compustore was nto a large company.

heggie

so out of the goodness of their heart they sold it to me at a few hundred quid loss to themselves, and to do this, altered the cost price on their system before i decided on buying one?!

Gillo

Just out of curosity, when did you buy it?