B&H Price on EX1 Drops $200

I wouldn't be suprised if sony came out with a big promo or price drop really soon to steal away all the pissed off panny people who will not be spending $2600 for the new 64 gig P2 card.
 
I love pannys look but it would probably serve them right if sony took a bulk of the buisness for pannys greed.
 
Oooh, now this is interesting. I've been told by several dealers that Sony is enforcing a minimum sales price of $6449 and any dealer that violates that price (meaning, sells it for any less) will have their dealership pulled from them.

Wonder if B&H faces losing their dealership, or if Sony will back down when the biggest reseller in the world thumbs their nose at them? or, if B&H negotiated some special deal, it will be most interesting to see how the rest of the dealers in the country react... this could get interesting.
 
Stay tuned :) I'll bet Sony steps in to capitalize off this every way they can. The market is prime pickens for them right now.
 
"Prime pickens"? The market is in disarray, electronics retailers are either going bankrupt (Circuit City) or posting "seismic" sales dropoffs (Best Buy's own words). Nobody's buying anything at all. I wouldn't be surprised at all if B&H instituted the price cuts because they've got a lot of unsold inventory and no buyers.

But it's fascinating because B&H probably sells more than all the other professional resellers combined. So what's Sony going to do if B&H thumbs their nose at the minimum sales price policy? (then again, I seem to remember them doing this same thing with Canon, when B&H became the first reseller to offer the XLH1 at any discount below $8995, and IIRC between Canon and B&H, B&H blinked first). But the market is insane right now, so it'll be most intriguing to see how this plays out.
 
I say let them all follow suit. b&h seems to keep the best deals and rebates. This is why they may stay ahead.
 
But will Sony let them? Or will they try to hold the line and instead terminate B&H's dealership (like they've supposedly threatened other dealers with)?
 
$6,349.00 right now at B&H. As a dealer, I'm not too happy about this. I wouldn't mind if we can sell it at that price too, but we're not allowed to.

Could it be that B&H only has PMW-EX1s without the slash 1 (PMW-EX1/1 has the new firmware upgrades). And It cost $100 to do the upgrade? Hence 6449 -100 = $6,349? That might sound like a good deal with Sony? Maybe I'm thinking too much.

But I heard a few dealers did lose their license already or 6 months of no XDCAM EX line because they sold an EX1 for less than $6,449.00
 
Barry_Green said:
But will Sony let them? Or will they try to hold the line and instead terminate B&H's dealership (like they've supposedly threatened other dealers with)?
Click to expand...

This would be utterly ridiculous.

Let's assume for a moment that Sony is not doing tiered pricing to it's resellers.

Mom and Pop store A get the EX1 wholesale for $5k. Big Box store B gets it for the same amount. Sony says MAP is $6k. Both shops make $1k per unit sold. Fair enough. Store B decides to sell for $5500. But they sell 100 units per month. Sony get's their same $5k regardless. But the store A can't compete. The squabble here is between Store A and Store B. Sony's MAP pricing is only to protect store A, not to protect it's own bottom line.

So let's add some reality into the picture. I'd bet real money that when Sony pushed stores to carry the EX1, they had a trailing deal that offered SxS cards as a profit center. For every EX1 sold, the store would probably sell 2 8GB cards. Thus stores like B&H agree to play inside the MAP rules since they would be getting more profits out of the cards. With the KxS solution, those nice profit center sales on cards have evaporated.

I'm willing to bet that B&H will keep it's pricing below MAP and point out to Sony that they are not making the margin on SxS that Sony said they would. The only way I could see this changing, is if Sony offeres B&H better wholesale pricing to offset the loss of SxS sales. Sony is not going to drop their #1 retailer in this economy. Not a retailer that spans the gamut of home electronics to top end broadcast level gear. No way. With electronics sales falling, Japan dropping into a recesssion, a falling Yen, and a super-hot product like the EX1... no way.
 
Well, let me inject some reality in the discussion: what you're saying would be perfectly reasonable, in a reasonable world, but we're talking about Sony here.

What I have been told by dealers is this: you sell an EX1 for less than $6449, you lose your right to sell the EX line. No leeway, no questions asked, you turn in an invoice that shows less than $6449 and <poof> your license is pulled.

Doesn't matter what price the dealer paid for it, doesn't matter about tiered pricing, doesn't matter about any of that. Sony is price-fixing the unit at $6449, forcing their dealers to show a documented receipt to the end customer with a price of at least $6449. If they show any lower price, they lose their XDCAM-EX authorization and can no longer buy or sell EX product. As confirmed by a Sony dealer in the post right above yours.

So I'm not talking about economies of scale, I'm talking about Sony's fixed-price minimum SELLING price. Not MAP, which is merely a minimum allowed ADVERTISING price, but Sony is actually attempting to enforce a minimum SALES price. A whole different thing.

And B&H, the biggest 800-lb gorilla in the business, has apparently just decided to violate it. So either they did it without Sony's permission, in which case Sony has a responsibility to terminate their dealership... or they did it WITH Sony's permission, in which case every authorized Sony dealer should be royally peeved and demand the same rights.

If B&H goes back up to $6449, then Sony must have twisted their arm and their other dealers can breathe easier. But if B&H continues to sell them at less than $6449, then that should be proof enough that they are doing so with Sony's permission (because, it must be considered de facto permission if Sony doesn't pull their license for violating the agreement). So then it gets very interesting to see how they respond to their other dealers. Or how their other dealers respond to Sony. But in a market as tight as this, Sony certainly can't afford to go pissing off every dealer they have, so ... grab some popcorn and watch how this plays out.
 
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What is the point of Sony trying to fix selling price? Surely dealers just over discount other accessories etc to drop the effective price of the camera without actually selling the camera below the enforced price.
 
Junior,

Thanks for putting out the new numbers. They had us all a little concerned... B&H just jumped the gun a bit.

Andy
 
Looks like the price dropped $100, not $200. $6349 is less $100 from $6449.
Looks like this is the week to spring for the third EX1.. but I haven't yet sold my last V1U to help finance it..
 
Well, at least my EX1 is depreciating slower than my 401k. :Þ

I'm thinking about liquidating my 401k and investing in 100 EX1's and storing them in my closet for a few years.
 
I sold my EX1 on ebay and now Sony took away my ebay license and they also took my girlfriend...didn't want her anyway she was a beatch.

jokes aside, would Sony really take action if a lets say a mom and pop store or I wanted to sell a few EX1 cameras for a low price? First time I heard of something like this, kind of dumb IMO.
 
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