Short story:
Some bad news here.
1) The national distributor could not figure out the logistics for making it happen nationwide and didn't have the setup to pull it off. So not proceeding with it.
2) The online guys: All of them provided a deal that was almost negligible over their current deals. Since the deals were negligible, we decided no tie up was in the offering. So we asked them to advertise on PG if they wanted people to know about the deals.
Long story:
Two things were required to pull off this deal.
1) Access to someone who can spread news about the deal in record time ( us
)
2) Someone who could provide a substantial deal and was equipped to do it.
We'll focus on the 2nd part. The deal providers.
Here is how it goes. You talk to a distributor. You commit a number to him. He then talks to the manufacturer. Manufacturer provides a special pricing for that specific model to that distributor. Distributor collects the money and then hands it over to the manufacturer. Delivers the laptop the end user.
Key things being
a) Commitment to a number to Manufacturer
b) Collection of money & delivery to the user
The problem:
Since this was a nationwide deal, there were very few national distributors who are capable of pulling this off. We couldn't really talk to a local distributor for a couple of reasons. He may promise delivery in Maharashtra, but will have flakey connections in Karnataka and may not be equipped to make it happen.
With the national distributor, the challenges were similar
- They wanted a number. we told them if it was a deal that was worth its salt, the entire MBA community would be a market.
- They were keen on doing a single model, we were not. ( I wasn't keen on letting someone do half the job and pass on the inefficiency to the student ). Plus the deal wouldn't be good if it was all related to a single manufacturer.
As much as they got that point, they too were .. not really ambitious or fast moving enough to make anything happen.
We spoke to the online guys -
All of them spoke, got the point, but we soon realized that beneath a lot of talk, most of them didn't have any significant level of negotiation power with the manufacturer. Some of the online folks didn't even have the scale to directly talk to the manufacturer, so they spoke to distributors. The moment we figured that out, we knew the chances of a deal were even lesser. But we were still keen to see if anyone was ambitious enough to target such a large market.
Sad to say, no one rose to the challenge.
Which leaves us here.
1) We can't stand behind a deal that is not an awesome deal. But the dealers are always welcome to advertise with us so that you guys can see the deal
2) I apologize for not being able to pull this off. When I started thinking about this a few weeks ago, I felt it made sense. But I have also realized that most of the companies out there aren't designed to be fast or ambitious or creative. Everyone wants stuff on a platter, even if it is their own sales.
I'll still be talking to people over the next two weeks, but I am not positive that anything significant will happen.
