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Good one, Jono.
I'm sure used car dealers don't like valuations appearing in the dealer's Black Book® - but it empowers consumers so, in my opinion (obviously I'm not a used car dealer) it's a good thing.
If I'm dealing with my USA dealer I get 5% on ANYTHING Leica. I still use my HK dealer, but thought it was worth mentioning. Seeing how the profit margins are only 8% or so, my dealer must LOVE me to give me more then 50% of his earnings
While I agree that sales are slow, everywhere, every dealer I've talked to says their margins have grown pretty darn slim too ... They have to sell more to make the needed income and need to do that in a slow market. It's a very tough game.
It would have been contingent on them building a proper supply chain. Leica manufactures demand by keeping products off the market as much as on. It's a dog and pony show to generate exclusivity. Would ANYONE really complain if they built up an Asian factory to build the camera bodies and produced their premium lenses in Germany? If so their priorities would be in need of serious re-alignment. Leica could put their cameras in the hands of many more shooters out there who I daresay have more interesting stories to tell than your average well-to-do hobbiest. Most people forget that a $3.5-5k FF camera is still VERY, VERY expensive, but do-able for most with a dream. But Leica wants to be just above do-able to keep the luxury market happy. I would bet you that they have a building full of Q's waiting to go out, but they just trickle them out slow as they can to make it look like they're so enormously popular that they can't possibly make them fast enough. Total. Bunk. But you know, part of the 'mystique.'
The Supreme Court some years ago ruled that vertical resale price fixing was no longer per se illegal -- meaning no defense for it. Now it is handled under the "rule of reason" and if there is enough competition from other brands, it could be okay. But the states have their own antitrust laws, and many still apply a per se rule to any kind of vertical price fixing. MAP is technically not price fixing because it theoretically only covers what a dealer can advertise, not what it can sell at. In any event a seller can always exercise its unilateral discretion to decide whether to deal or not to deal. The bigger problem as I understand it for smaller dealers is minimum stocking requirements. Many cannot afford to keep that much money tied up in gear on the shelves. The discussion about gross margins is really beside the point because every dealer has costs it must absorb like rent (if they are brick and mortar) , salaries, etc.
