Apple Australia's In Trouble

[digitalrampage]

Well I work for an apple reseller and all I can say is

"OH NO"

I look at Apple's stock levels and I see nothing but out of stock, next shipment March.

Only problem is, things like Powerbook PSU's have a 5-7week wait... to bad if your power supply blows up...

Do you want airport? Oh well, may as well get the place wired up baby, because it will be available again in April....

Or and too bad if you want a Titanium powerbook... we have recieved less then 10 units since December 15th....

Add to this the continuing problems that iMac G4's have not shipped in numbers greater then 4 at a time, and that apple says that only very limited quantities will ship THROUGHOUT MARCH!!!

ADD TO THIS the fact that UNDER 15% of iMac 700 COMBO's on Backorder will be filled before end of week 1 March!!!

THERE IS NO STOCK!

THE ONLY THING THEY HAVE is LCD's and Powermac's and NO ONE WANTS THEM!!!!!!!

I have had more then a few customer's tell me they were switching to Mac from PC and are going back

Mac OS X Has created a huge demand..... I have UNIX heads in all the time... and PC people alike....

BUT THEY CAN't BUY ANYTHING...... from us or APPLE

Check www.apple.com.au store and try and order anything but a PMG4, LCD or iPod.

I love Apple's, but Apple has destroyed the Australian Apple market.... After the collapse of the largest apple resseller group ever formed "Buzzle Operations" last year in Australia and watching stock being not SOLD to us for 5 months, consumers walked away, not being able to buy Apple Stock...... now consumers once again have walked away once again in discust...


To add to my hate towards the supply at the moment, one of my customers has tried to purchase an iMac g3 from me... problem... When i first took the order, they were scheduled for the 15th of February... When they rang me yesterday if was the 25th of Feb... Now it says end week 1 MARCH

AAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH

 

[748s]

some dodgy stuff went on after the buzzle fiasco. i'm being careful what i say, because i've got some harsh words for SOME re sellers around sydney, and i don't know where you are working or who you might be. i'm hearing apple au. are supplying one re-seller with the first shipment of new i-macs and giving the others none. this could be scurrilous rumour, or could be truth. imacs seem to be short everywhere. we are, to coin the phrase, "at the arse end of the world", so the supply chain may be slow to kick in. S Jobs could do well by flying the iJet to frenchs forest for a quick look at whats going on. with mac use in au. at 2% and falling, nothing to sell wont improve that figure. might you be located in the east?

 

[digitalrampage]

This is very true.... we have people waiting while other people have extras sitting on the floor....

I don't work in the east if you are thinking TSQ...

I have worked around the place & in the city.

All of my customers return within 1-6 months so I must be doing something right...

 

[Beej]

There is some serious favouritism going on... I'm in Melbourne, one chain (the biggest pack of pricks you'll ever hopefully not meet - I used to work there) has all the iMacs they want and more, and the other chains have got hardly any. One chain (of three stores) has got 5.

I'd also like to challenge your comment that you can buy LCDs straight away... it took mine a week to come through. But my new Power Mac was there to be taken straight away.

You're right about Apple needing to lift its game, but I don't know if it's Apple Australia's fault. I'm sure if they had the stock to give enough to retailers they would. Apple (outside Australia) needs to give us more stuff!

Something to remember, though, is that if you live in a Major city, or even in a major rural center here in Australia, you can get to an AppleCentre without too much trouble. There are a lot of them around, compared to what I've heard from people elsewhere in the world.

I have to travel 1/2 hour to get to the store I go to, but that is by choice. I pass two others on the way there, but due to prior experience, I steer well clear of them.

And my 2.2c (inc GST) on Buzzle... that was never going to work. I have a friend that worked for them. The whole thing was shambles. And I didn't need him to tell me that, you could see it just from walking into any of their stores.

After Buzzle died, there were stores here in Melbourne that were sold for nothing (yes... $0) to a certain chain I know. (Anyone wonder how one particular chain in Melbourne grew from 1 store to six stores in the space of about eight months?) Mmm...

 

[madamimadam]

I actually work for one of barely a handful of Australian distributors and so I know EXACTLY what you are talking about to. I don't think it is Apple Aus.'s fault either; the directors, who happen to also be family related, just went over to Copertino (spelling?) office as part of a free trip from Apple which was supposed to be for MacWorld until Jobs changed the date. Anyway, the point of the story is that while they were over there, they saw that the Apple Store they were taken around was stacked to the roof with new iMacs. Apperently someone did ask where ours were and no one they saw from Apple could answer the question.

I assumed we hit one of those catch 22s; stock is produced and allocated according to demand; Australia has low demand so low levels of stock are sent to us; new Aussie customers come over to Apple products but because of the total lack of demand they can not get stock and go to PC.

Basically, we don't have much demand and we are inhibited from getting demand.

 

[748s]

digitalrampage, i'm wondering if i'm following you around. i seem to last 6 to 9 months with a re-seller before i have to move on because the service falls in a heap. you probably have seen me lurking around.
it was amazing that someone decided to do a documentary on buzzle and filmed everything from day 1. each episode left me speechless. taking on THAT agency to give them a company name, because the guy doing the pitch claimed he went to apple and had his photo taken next to steve's iCar was insane. not as insane as then agreeing to pay $50,000 for the word buzzle.......who was laughing.......did anyone not think it was just a stoopid name? suppose the funny thing was the agency didn't get the money. beej, there was a similar situation here in sydney after the collapse, some that were in buzzle came out stronger. surprises me why the ACCC aren't looking into it.
because the demand for the iMac is huge, could ones heading here been diverted elsewhere? still doesn't account for shortages of tiBooks.
it will eventually sort it self out. mac use in australia should be hitting 1% by then.

 

[mymemory]

Down here in Caracas, every single store has 15", 17" and 22" flat panel in stock but no one iMac has arrive to my country and we are 2 hours from Miami.

The stores down here are very upset, there are not that many but Apple is making the bussiness looking bad for them. One of the stores are selling Mac and PC's at same time, that means less knowlege of the product.

The stores down here are surviving selling memories and some tech support.

I'm sure Apple have to take care of the over seas market more seriosly.

On the other hand would be good for them to compensate pulling down the LCD prices

 

[748s]

mymemory what's happening in Venezuela? heard a story on the radio here, has the president gone mad? people on the street just laughed and said he was crazy. did he really talk for 4 hours on tv about nothing? is it really that bad?

 

[oldMac]

which president?

*laughing*

Sorry, mymemory, I know it's not that funny if you live there.

 

[digitalrampage]

I should make it more clear I only blame Apple OZ for its poor distribution techniques... Apple USA is the fault here... they have to realise the potential and how many people are waiting over here...

Also

748's email me would you please....

Cheers

 

[datalok]

an example

last night a majpr Apple dealer in Melbourne planned to have a meet and greet the new imac evening - people turned up but the imac didn't - apparently they have yet to receive one (any one) and the guy had only played with one at a mac australia function - this is ridiculous. What is the point of advertising this product if you can't actually buy it or even see it. Stevey boy - get on the horn and put a firework under these guys at distribution.

 

[mac15]

maybe steve should plan a macworld australia
and run an ad campain over here
people don't know about apple over here

 

[MacAztec]

Ausi!

Ausi err Auzi! I think if Apple wants to be successful, they need to have a good quality of business perspection wherever they are sellign their products. I like how NOW, they dont have unknown companies selling their Macs. You go to buy a PC, and I mean, you can actually order them off of the TV! Its getting sick!

Apple (on the other hand) has a strong method. Quality over quantity. I like this view. Aple will have a long future ahead of them if they keep this.

 

[cb911]

oh no!

i'm going to buy a TiBook soon, or should i say was. might as well wait until Macworld NY until the new speed-bumped TiBooks.

 

[whitegold]

Apple has made some big mistakes

I don't work with apple, and aren't a dealer in anyway, but several friends of mine are. Here's a list of apple Australia's more interesting decisions.

One dealer was completely unable to get stock. As the orders mounted and were not filled, apple sent round a guy to inform them that they would be taking no more orders, as the dealer had gone over their acceptable credit limit!

The usual lack of new iMacs, other stock, etc.

Apple has a nice habit of shipping nothing, then forcing excess stock on dealers at the end of the month to make up their quotas. Nice.

APPARENTLY (can someone confirm this?) all dealers are now required to decide what sort of market they're targetting. "Consumer" or "Professional". A store listed as professional can only sell products, and only sell to customers regarded as "professionals". This to me is the most counter-logical thing in the world. ALL stores should be able to sell whatever they want.

Apple's "Apple Center" policy is ridiculous. Apple Center stores are crippled by apple, confined heavily in their look, their promotions, etc. Apple needs to seriously rethink their straight-jacket approach to their top product sellers. Stop crippling them. I know one (very successful) dealer who dropped apple center status because they would have had to get new (wooden, as per apple center guidlines) flooring in their stunning and modern showroom.

I don't know if it's still the same, but I went to apple.com.au to get a price on an iPod today, and got their 404 error page. Way to support local content, idiots.

In conclusion I want to say it really doesn't matter the faintest big how much of a market we are.

I do not get companies who do this. You don't simply pick a market and ignore all others. You try to maximize sales and growth in EVERY market. Apple seem to be trying to minimize sales and stiffle growth. Now THAT is thinking different!

 

[Taft]

Probably a necessary evil.

With a company like Apple, they usually need to keep their inventory pretty lean. This prevents a glut of inventory that will lead to poor projected sales, price slashes, an inability to introduce new products to the line, and a plummeting stock price (remember that?).

But that alone probably doesn't explain it. Because their inventory is quite lean, they probably don't have immediate turn around on all purchase requests and will have a hard time immediatelly reacting to market expansion in certain areas.

My guess is that they create inventory based on expected sales globally and distribute inventory based on regional expected sales *and* a region's perceived ability to expand its market (ie. they probably favor downtown Chicago stores to a small Apple dealer in a small town in southern IL). They probably use historical data to create the expected sales number. Now if a particular region's market becomes much better (ie, many more sales region-wide) you are probably going to see inventory problems all down the chain.

One and a half times the number of towers sold=one and a half times the number of hard disk replacements. And if people can't get their hands on the model they want, they might step up to the next highest model or down a model. This creates inventory problems through most product lines and replacement/repairs.

Fixing a single product's sortage isn't that hard, but changing a whole distribution schema to a region presents much more difficult problems. They can't just take units away from another region (that would create a similar problem in *two* regions), they probably have to ramp up global production (which they are probably reluctant to do).

I'm not necessarily defending Apple, but I bet the situation is more complicated than "Apple is ***** up in Australia".

Matthew

 

[madamimadam]

Congrats

Congratulations to MacAztec and Mac15 on getting your avatar.