GAK have been naughty...

[BassApprentice]

Seems the music instrument market is a bit of a racket just now. Korg, Roland and GAK all fined with others apparently on strong warnings....

Might be a good time to ask for a discount 😅

https://guitar.com/news/korg-roland-and-gak-fined-5-5m-for-price-fixing-by-uk-watchdog/?fbclid=IwAR3ivWtDwiPYBuEB0DRpLPvDUDZ4vCtCWT9aM89ivTIgrzC4yVwwpmu-4gc 

[fretmeister]

And Yamaha got away with it because they told the CMA about the deal with GAK.

 

[Grangur]

Thought this article may be of interest to the BC collective 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/musical-instrument-firms-to-pay-millions-after-breaking-competition-law

Edited June 30, 2020 by Grangur

[Geek99]

Good ! Watchdogs should have sharp teeth. Now I know gak were warned and continued still, I won’t buy from them again 

Edited June 30, 2020 by Geek99

[Lfalex v1.1]

16 minutes ago, Geek99 said:

Good ! Watchdogs should have sharp teeth. Now I know gak were warned and continued still, I won’t buy from them again 

I saw this elsewhere just now, and that's exactly what I thought; "They're not getting any of my money"

[Geek99]

I reported Sykes cottages to the CMA recently over some very sharp practice (as did about 100k other people) - it’s good to know the CMA are actively engaged in the markets. 

[Vinny]

So wait...Yamaha dream up a price-fixing scam with GAK, shop them for it, and get off with nary a slap?

Nice going, Yamaha!

[Fil1ip]

What have they actually done...

[ezbass]

13 minutes ago, Fil1ip said:

What have they actually done...

Price fixing.

[MacDaddy]

Is this price fixing high or low? Coz GAK were usually good for a bargain.

[cetera]

Duplicate (original) thread at:

 

[AndyTravis]

There’s the funny old thing with Guitar/Music shops.

The retailers complain about the discount merchants - so their big accounts try to resolve it.

The discount merchants are in a race to make the least margin. Usually from a web store rather than shop front.

The customers want top notch service and an opportunity to try before they buy...but don’t want to pay what they perceive to be over the odds.

It’s a lose/lose situation for everyone.

When in the trade, my colleagues and I used to tear our hair out over it.

We used to have people come in and try things, ask if we’d match a price which was £4 profit on an £800 sale...was very disheartening.

They’d purchase the same instrument online, and come to us when there was a problem - and then be dissatisfied with the fact that as a Fender/Gibson/Epiphone dealership, we wouldn’t sort the problems they were experiencing as warranty repair.

Also that we wouldn’t resolve an issue with a Fender bought from Thomann in Germany by sending it to Fender GBI to fix...for free.

The list goes on, I’m not sure that price fixing or MAP pricing is the pure evil it’s made out to be.

But I’ve seen both sides. 
 

[taunton-hobbit]

It used to be called 'a race to the bottom'

😎

[skankdelvar]

From now on, anytime someone says 'Yamaha' in my presence I shall say 'Scarface. Mark of the squealer'.

[AndyTravis]

Yamaha - there was a point where whenever we sold one of the immensely popular YDP-141 digital pianos, we lost £20.

And that wasn’t even us cutting prices.

The one thing which always annoyed was that Many big suppliers used to offer retrospective discounts into the mix, so if we shifted x-hundred units of their product we’d get a kickback. Some companies factored that into their pricing, some didn’t.

It’s an absolute shedload of worms...

[Fil1ip]

10 minutes ago, AndyTravis said:

Yamaha - there was a point where whenever we sold one of the immensely popular YDP-141 digital pianos, we lost £20.

And that wasn’t even us cutting prices.

The one thing which always annoyed was that Many big suppliers used to offer retrospective discounts into the mix, so if we shifted x-hundred units of their product we’d get a kickback. Some companies factored that into their pricing, some didn’t.

It’s an absolute shedload of worms...

It does not sound a great business to be on 

[AndyTravis]

8 minutes ago, Fil1ip said:

It does not sound a great business to be on 

No. Really wasn’t.

Id say about 2012 was the beginning of the end for bricks and mortar guitar shops.

I left in April 2014, I’d done 12 years.

oh well. 
 

Would love to give a specialist shop a go. But, without a lottery win...no chance.

Q: ”what’s the best way to make a small fortune in Musical Instrument retail?”

A: “Start with a big one”.

[Mykesbass]

27 minutes ago, AndyTravis said:

Yamaha - there was a point where whenever we sold one of the immensely popular YDP-141 digital pianos, we lost £20.

And that wasn’t even us cutting prices.

The one thing which always annoyed was that Many big suppliers used to offer retrospective discounts into the mix, so if we shifted x-hundred units of their product we’d get a kickback. Some companies factored that into their pricing, some didn’t.

It’s an absolute shedload of worms...

Saw this when I had my shop for a short time. The kickback discount meant I could buy a Gibson Les Paul from one of the big retailers for less than I  could buy from the distributor. Funnily enough I didn't stock Gibson!

[AndyTravis]

28 minutes ago, Mykesbass said:

Saw this when I had my shop for a short time. The kickback discount meant I could buy a Gibson Les Paul from one of the big retailers for less than I  could buy from the distributor. Funnily enough I didn't stock Gibson!

Ah Rosetti. Now that was a wild organisation.

We bought Les Paul standards for about £1160 ex vat one week, £1045 another...we’d jump on low cost prices, and a week later “buy 5 (at £1160) get one free” - absolutely mental.

So some places had paid £1160, some had paid £1045, some had paid £967.

All for the same guitar.

They’d also have back orders in for Rickenbacker stuff, 2 years or so.

They’d send them to us “by accident” and say “ah keep it, we’ll knock you 10% off trade” so we’d end up with a random 4003 bass some poor bugger elsewhere had paid for 6 months previous and they remained in the queue.

As a point - when Gibson took over their own distribution, all of this nonsense stopped. It was replaced by another brand of nonsense - £50k a month buy in.

 

Edited June 30, 2020 by AndyTravis

[stewblack]

I was in a book shop once photographing interesting looking covers on my phone so I could look for them cheaper online. 

Not proud of it at all, far from it, realised what I was doing and felt like the heel I was. So I don't do it any more. 

I never had the chance to show the appropriate loyalty to my local instrument shops because people doing the exact same thing I did in the book shop had already helped them go out of business. 

[tauzero]

On 29/06/2020 at 13:58, fretmeister said:

And Yamaha got away with it because they told the CMA about the deal with GAK.

It seems that way - GAK get stitched up twice over by Yamaha, once by tying their hands over prices and then by grassing them up. It should be Yamaha people don't want to buy from, not GAK (at least the way I read it).

[Monkey Steve]

I know we've debated this before, and I've always come down on the side of protecting the smaller sellers by allowing the manufacturer to fix a minimum price.  The CMA seems to have completely given up on that, and is happy for the larger retailers to do what they like to undercut the smaller ones - from their open letter to the industry:

If your business model does not enable you to compete on price with the big online ‘discounters’ you need to find other ways in which to make your products more attractive to shoppers and protect your margins.

 

[MacDaddy]

No mention of extortionate business rates and rents bricks 'n mortar shops have to pay.

Greedy landlords seem immune to criticism? 

[gjones]

Price fixing has been obvious for years. 

I don't know why it took such a long time for anybody to do anything about it.

[ClassicVibes]

I buy all my strings from the US and have done for ten or so years. Why? Because even with shipping, it's still cheaper than buying from a shop here.