On 1/3/2011 1:41 PM, Tom Fine wrote:
> You may be asking rhetorical questions in today's times, but I'd 
> answer, "any large corporation phasing out a tiny part of their 
> business."

I certainly agree but it seemed so out-of-place.  It would be smart to 
have announced it in advance and watch the huge orders rush in and make 
one last killer of a profit.  If course it could backfire and there 
might be a decision made NOT to end production, and that could have been 
why it was kept secret.

As we have all been watching how bad decisions have killed the record 
industry, I remember how these things have been going on seemingly 
forever.  When Schwann dropped the Black Diamond symbol for cut-outs and 
The Gramophone dropped its monthly cut-out page, it seemed so strange 
that the record industry would not want to sell-out its soon to be 
cut-outs at full price by publicising them rather than sell them at a 
loss later on.  Publish the list, tell everyone they have two months, 
and then trash the rest, don't discount them.  If we KNOW we won't find 
them cheap, we'll get them while they are available.

Tom will especially be interested in this -- in 1966 and 67 I worked for 
a huge Rack Jobber that did a large cut-out business.  One day we were 
told to clear out the whole front corner of the warehouse -- move the 
stock there somewhere else.  Then two tractor trailers arrived FULL with 
perhaps a million Mercury/Philips/Fontana/Smash cut-out LPs.  It's where 
I got all my mint stereo Mercury comedy albums -- 2nd City, etc -- and 
loads of other stuff.  If I only knew how important the Living Presence 
classicals would be -- GEEZE, there were 100 copies of each there.  We 
stickered them at 49 cents to $1.89 and out they went over the next six 
months.  I never saw this invoice, but I bet the pop stuff cost us less 
than a quarter and the classical a half a buck at the most.  The only 
markings were the circular rubber stamp.

These things happened over and over -- somebody else made the profit on 
the soon-to-be-rare stuff, and the same thing is about to happen with 
the Techniques turntables.  If we knew -- really knew, not just the 
rumors -- a LOT of people would have bought two, and Techniques would 
have gotten the profit.

Mike Biel  [log in to unmask]

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> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Biel" <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
>> On 1/3/2011 12:43 PM, Tom Fine wrote:
>>> Kevin at KAB Electronics sent the following response to my followup 
>>> querie on this topic:
>>>
>>> _____________________________
>>> About 3 weeks ago, an official announcement was made to all 
>>> distributors
>>> that the Technics line of turntables is now discontinued. ...They 
>>> purposely waited until all inventory was depleted.
>>
>> What kind of warped business logic is THAT???????  What kind of 
>> people do that to loyal business associates and customers????  This 
>> seems sadistic.
>>
>> Mike Biel  [log in to unmask]
>>
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