Levers

[amcmo]

If Mat Mladin had continued to supply stealerships as per the old system they would have had fewer and fewer sales, since damn near everyone is now buying from overseas.

Knowing the dealer's costs for most products, the 'stealerships' is not correct in the majority of cases - obviously some did charge over the top, but in general I stand by my comments that it is SUBSTANTIALLY more expensive to run a business in Australia (blame successive governments). There are not too many dealerships out there that make much more than a subsistence living for the owners. The exceptions are the big chains that carefully manage costs and benefit from volume pricing on their accessories and even some of those are just hanging on at present. I don't work for a dealer and don't have shares in any but do have a very close knowledge of their costs.

I know everyone thinks, 'drop prices and sell much more' but there's a calculation that shows how much you have to increase sales for every 5 percent you drop prices just to make the same end profit and it's staggering.

Not that all this is necessarily any reason on it's own that customers should ignore the cheaper prices available overseas. We try to work with dealers to enable them to get close enough to overseas prices to make it worthwhile for customers to consider the trade off of a slightly higher price for local stock and warranty support.