gibson politics?

[replayboy]

Can anyone explain the merits(and reasons) for Gibson not allowing dealers to display their stock AND prices:confused: for their guitars ????????????
In these days of stiff competition i would have thought this is not helpful to their buisness ?????? If you want to check out a Les Paul VOS, a printed statement " to our loyal supporters" is not going to make you part with your hard earned cash....?????:confused:

[Pietro]

This kind of thing normally protects the local dealers. Ever since the rise of the big catalog guys (I used to work for Veneman's who had one of the first, the Music Emporium catalog) it is harder and harder for the local music store to make a buck. So, some have MAPs (Minimum Advertised Price).

For instance, there was a certain brand of synthesizer, when I sold them, that you had to come into the store to get the "best price" on. If you called all the dealers, you got the EXACT same price on the phone. Since I can actually sell it for whatever I want, it's not price-fixing, but it did mean that if you lived round the block from a little store that sold it, you couldn't get on the phone and find a rock-bottom price in the next state, and thus "cheat" the little guy out of the chance to make the sale. It helped the local dealer a lot.

The Gibson thing may be similar to that. I liked selling that brand of synth more than the others which ended up being a simple "call around town for the lowest price" thing then go buy it, the salesman makes nearly nothing so he has little to no incentive to support the guy who only shops for price anyway.

[Barry]

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u92/barry2001/DSC00667.jpg

Yeah , I think its to give the local guys a more even market so they can compete with the big guys . I recently got this from a "local" dealer . Very nice playing/sounding LP .