[Asterisk-Users] Sangoma VS. Digium

[Adam Goryachev]

On Thu, 2005-04-07 at 13:26 +0200, ht at phonitel.com wrote:
> Yes,
> 
> Most hardware manufacturers I know sell directly at retail price.

Most I know/dealt with don't (but hey, I don't really deal with
'hardware manufacturers'... I'm probably more of a retail customer....

> In voip Business and from my experience, you can order Quintum gateways from
> Quintum Technologies right away at retail price. You can always get them
> cheaper from reseller. GSM devices manufacturers sell direct as well although
> they have resellers, unless exclusively agreed not to sell in that part of the
> world.
> 
> For me it seems logical that manufacturer promote products themselves and sell
> them. Because resellers sometimes just don't react to sales leads. There is no
> reason why a manufacturer should lose these sales leads if reseller does not
> react.

Well, I can see that the manufacturer could sell direct to the public,
but this doesn't assist the reseller in better serving the end user.

Digium could place certain restrictions on resellers, eg, each reseller
is restricted to selling to customers living in the same country (or any
other country which doesn't have a reseller in it). They might also
increase the retail price (or decrease the reseller price) so that there
is a bigger margin available to the reseller to cover the costs of
support/warranty.

> Now, if customers go to Digium right away instead of coming to reseller even
> though reseller is better price and close with pieces in stock to be served
> immediately, I think it is not the distribution of Digium that has problem, but
> the customers :-)

Yes, this is a 'stupid' customer, but consider that the consumer must be
educated so that they can better help themselves. This is one of the
fundamentals of the asterisk community! We need to provide the 'right'
incentive to the consumer to shop from their 'local' reseller. 

Having said all that, I definitely don't like those annoying websites
where you have to fill out some silly form and hope that your local
reseller will call you one day. You should be able to browse all the
products on-line, with retail pricelist.

BTW, Consider if digium simply took the order, and then asked the
reseller to fulfil the order, adding a credit for the card sold to the
resellers account. Then the customer is sent their receipt along with
the reseller contact details for order delivery enquiries/technical
support.

Finally, I must point out that I find the local Australian distributor
fantastic, they have even tried to assist me in solving my problem with
a TE405p that I purchased direct from digium (before the australian
distributor existed). So, if you are in Australia, and need digium
hardware, I'd strongly advise you talk to
http://www.austechpartnerships.com/atp/ (no, I'm not employed by them,
blah blah blah).

Regards,
Adam
-- 
 -- 
Adam Goryachev
Website Managers
Ph:  +61 2 9345 4395                        adam at websitemanagers.com.au
Fax: +61 2 9345 4396                        www.websitemanagers.com.au