Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 19:59:34 +0100 (BST) From: Stephen Roome <steve@visint.co.uk> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: jbryant@tfs.net, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: On Holy Wars, and a Plea for Peace [sorry Danny, wherever you are, but the title fits]... Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.970419195516.2984C-100000@bagpuss.visint.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <19805.861384223@time.cdrom.com>
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On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> > I was on Totenham court road in London (England) yesterday and saw some
> > Walnut Creek CD rom's for sale, can't remember which ones, but they were
> > WCreek. However I saw no FreeBSD cd's there...
> >
> > The Bay Area is only a very small part of the world. No matter how
> > important.
>
> I never meant to imply that we were the center of the universe, simply
> that I'd seen the product in stores here. I can't speak for other
> areas of the world simply because I don't live in those areas. QED. :-)
>
> I also talked with our sales manager yesterday about getting into more
> retail stores and her comment was that we were definitely _trying_ to do
> this on a more or less constant basis, but getting in bed with the Mafia
> for a portion of their lucrative drug-and-sex trade is actually *easier*
> than getting into some of these retail stores. They only buy from
> certain distributors and those same distributors require some pretty
> insane deals, including direct kick-backs and up-front subsidies
> ("You give us $50,000 up-front and we'll agree to stock your product").
>
> We're not quite big enough to support that kind of graft. :(
I don't think you need to be, I think what you say about stores only
buying from one supplier is very true for the large chain stores, like pc
world or whatever. But it's the smaller shops which attract real computer
enthusiasts (geeks), and they usually buy from whoever they can, at
whatever cost.
No-one who is new to the PC market is going to do anything but install
Windows 95 on their computer (or maybe NT now). Perhaps aiming less at
mainstream companies who supply for the office environment and aiming more at
the smaller companies selling older second hand equipment to people who know
what they are talking about would be a better approach.
Well, it makes sense to me, of course this approach requires more work,
but if it actually works then it'd be worth it.
--
Steve Roome
Technical Systems Manager, Vision Interactive Ltd.
E: steve@visint.co.uk M: +44 (0) 976 241 342
T: +44 (0) 117 973 0597 F: +44 (0) 117 923 8522
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