Best Buy to Carry Alpine feb 05

Didn't think so.   I keep seeing flashes of Pioneer's at wallmart, and how they used to be a high end company till something like this happend.  Now i wont touch the stuff with a 10 foot pole cuz every kid under the sun with $99 has a pioneer deck.

Its a shame! a DAM shame!

I can just see wal-mart selling the CDA-9835 and some dumass kid trying to figure out how to turn up the bass and just do something totally different then the walmart assistant/jewely seller/mechanic/clothes department person try to turn it up and then try to explain the bass engine and say "its an actual small engine that boosts the sound with a special belt inside the cd player"...uh huh.

i dont know guys.... i was one of the first certified installers Alpine trained when they came to Canada in 1979, I've been a warranty service centre for them since 1980... I've stuck with them thru the rich years,  ( Lambo giveaways, massive promos, etc ) and the leaner years of the early 90's... but i can't say i really like the direction the company or the product is heading....( amplifiers that come with an owner/user's manual the size of a phone book )   i really hope they dont go back to the slock "get the product out there no matter what " mentality of the late 80's, early 90's when they dumped the product in the big box stores with no training or support.... i still respect the name and i know all the guys at the company here in Canada, but it seems of late like they are floundering, trying to get a grasp on their own identity....

i don't know....  just an observation....

Walmart will never ever carry alpine. Best buy is up and coming i believe were finally dropping the POS tf punch series. We need to get rid of pioneer, pioneer has fallen alot over the past few years. IF we carried pioneer premier it would be a different story. Over the years we have carried alot if crap brands but i think over the next year thatll change. After tweeter falls which should be soon, I think well pick up alot of their brands as well. CC and       Tweeter are not doing good.

Vbel just remember when you buy an alpine off of ebay good luck getting warranty work from alpine done it cuz they wont touch it with a pole.

Pioneer is just cheeper.  Thats what people look for.  When they want quality, usually they know what there looking for, and /////Alpine is on there list.

Hopefully the sales men/women will be properly trained to sell the products atleast.  If there unknowledgable they wont sell much.  Most of the good stuff in alpine products are hidden features only trained people know about.

I used to be a diehard Alpine fanatic, but since they starting manufacturing them in the USA instead of Japan, the quality of the products have gone down hill. I was buying Alpine stuff since the early 90's up until the late 90's when I started to realize that the newer Alpine stuff wasn't as bulletproof as it used to be. I still have the Alpine HU's in our competition vehicle ( the F1 Status system ) but any of the other HU's that they have I would not purchase becuase of customer complaints with them not performing properly.

As for Pioneer, I have been installing the entry level HU's for about 5 years now and I've had about 4-6 come back due to manufacturer defect. Not too bad considering that we sold about 100 + of these entry level HU's. ** When I refer to entry level I'm talking about the 1400, 1500, 1600 series. Not any of the 3300, 3400 or other's. **

Stavy,

Does this mean possibly that Future Shop might also get access to the Alpine line in the future? Right now we are stuck with JVC and Pioneer as the top end. The best one we have is the DEH-P8MP, which is a decent deck, but i still go to Alpine carriers to get my decks. I'm an alpine guy, so this news is exciting.

Here is my .02. Some of us have been around the block many times and can now use our crystal balls much better. It comes down to this.....

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

If Circuit City was doing the numbers that they were expecting to do and Alpine were happy with those numbers, the line would still be there. If Best Buys (probably with more locations thus more exposure and sales) is picking up the line, who is going to do more business with Alpine. If Wal-Mart wants to come along and lay the smack down to Best Buys, don't think that for one second they would not get the line. For Alpine it is business and big business at that. Marketing 101. The more you sell the more $ you make.

If you were Alpine and Wally World called you up with a realistic purchase order of $3,000,000.00 on the opening order and a promise to do another order in 90 days and a further target of $10,000,000.00 in a years business, would you turn away that kind of business........Wal-Mart can get any line they want. It's all about the $, not the brand.

stavy customs1 wrote:

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Jeez i hope walmart never has an install bay. 

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hahaha - god help us all...     anyone ever had an oil change there? I mean, how bad can you mess up an oil change???

On the positive side of all this is that Best Buy is very, very good at standing behind their warrenty.  They offer an excellent extended warranty, I think it's like for 4 years after the mfg. warr. is up (correct me if I'm wrong).  I know that it is a pretty common practice to (plug your ears and cover your eyes, stavy) blow your woofers on purpose when the new models come out when you have the warranty. Just set 'em on the cust. service counter and  go  grab some  new  ones,  sign  your  name, smile  and  say  thank  you,  and  voila!  -  new model.  Not that I'm advocating to rip off the company, it's just that they're that good about taking returns if you do get a truly defective unit. 

Alpine selling to Best Buy is a mistake for Alpine.That store chain is a whorehouse to quality product.Yes I said "whorehouse".They tried to sell HiFonics about 8yrs ago.Thank God for us it was only the low end product.They tried to bastardize the product but they gave it up.If it doesn't sell to their expectations they will strong arm Alpine and blow it out.20 years ago RCA didn't want to sell to them.Best Buy went out,bought product from dealers and put it on their floor and sold it at a loss and told RCA look we can sell anything we want to.That can from a Best Buy employee many years ago!!!!!

As it was said by forrbidden, its all about the dollar. Wal Mart has single handedly put companies outta buisness because they start to do buisness with them, so the company expands there facilities to accomidate the huge increase in production, then Wal Mart turns around and drops the company and that same company is pretty much outta buisness over night. And there arent very many companies that are to big for that to happen. Like dont think for a single second that Alpine is not going to have to revamp its production to start supplying best buy. We are talking about, I believe 468 stores in USA and 18 in Canada if they plan on using BBYC. I hope this doesnt bite them in the ass.

Well i thought I should finally get in on this one.  So I work at a walmart up here in canada.  The day we get Alpine stuff is the day hell freezes over.  If we get a new deck it takes about 2 months just too put it in the display box.  We carry, low low models of the pioneer, all the sony crap and then theres some rampage and a really low level blaupunkt.  I work at the front end and if I ever get asked about anything to do with stereos, I usually tell them to save their money and get somen decent.  I had a kid come through and buy 2 10" rampage subs, the purdy blue ones, they rang up at about 30 bucks a piece.  He couldnt say enough about them, how deep they hit, clear and loud... on and on, I had to hold in my laughter.  Sure its nice and cheap, but you get what you pay for. 

Chris

Ravendarat wrote:

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As it was said by forrbidden, its all about the dollar. Wal Mart has single handedly put companies outta buisness because they start to do buisness with them, so the company expands there facilities to accomidate the huge increase in production, then Wal Mart turns around and drops the company and that same company is pretty much outta buisness over night. And there arent very many companies that are to big for that to happen. Like dont think for a single second that Alpine is not going to have to revamp its production to start supplying best buy. We are talking about, I believe 468 stores in USA and 18 in Canada if they plan on using BBYC. I hope this doesnt bite them in the ass.

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I just wanted to add to this comment about Wal-Mart and the way they do business. I know from first hand how Wal Mart works and most companies that are not world wide giants will usually benefit from Wal Mart as long as their product sells to what Wal Mart forcasts for them.

When Wal Mart comes to a company and asks them to produce a certain product from them, they forcast a sales number for the year and then expects the company to deliver 100% of this forcast every month and then demands a 5% price savings to them every year of production, otherwise no deal. Forecasts are usually 2X what the company produces in a year ! This is JUST Wal Mart, not even including what they have to produce for their regular customer's.

So the company does this and fills the initial order and if the product sells then the company has to keep filling the shelves because it is their responsibility to control inventory at Wal Mart not Wal Mart themselves. If the product doesn't sell, then Wal Mart tells the manufacturer to stop production and wait until it does. This is bad when you consider that most companies have to hire double ,sometimes triple the staff to accommodate the Wal Mart order's and then if it doesn't sell on their shelves, the company is stuck holding all the inventory they produced + what's not selling on the shelves of Wal Mart ! 

YES !! Wal Mart is so big now that they demand that inventory control and instore inventory is not their responsibility. They own none of the inventory inside the store and is completely the manufacturer's responsibility to keep shelves stocked. This is very harsh for companies that are small that have a great product to sell, but can also devestate larger companies too. In my books, Wal Mart's business philosophy will be replicated all around the world and will soon be an industry norm.

This model (consignment inventory) is already the norm in many industries.  It will eventually drive all but the biggest companies out of business, IMO.  It's no wonder that the single largest source for Wal Mart products is the government of China (as they support and subsidize their growing manufacturing sector) and that Wal Mart imports from China represent nearly 25% of that contry's exports, and nearly 15% of the total US trade defecit.  As long as the Chinese government will subsidize potential losing propositions like a Wal Mart deal, US companies will not be able to compete.

This, along withthings like their discriminatory hiring practices, failure to pay OT and censorship of what they will and will not sell are some of the reasons I can proudly say I have never set foot inside a WalMart store.

Iv only stepped in walmart 2 times in my life , , once to look, , and another time to buy poly fill.  Everything else i get a family hardware stores, or canadian tire becuase its owners live in my city,and they own a few family businesses around town.

griff01xj wrote:

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As someone who's actually worked and managed a Best Buy 12v section let me be the first to say its the best place in the world to get a 99 dollar deck.

I started at 54 in Dallas and GO'ed 470 and 477 in Seattle which were two of the first Best Buy's in Seattle (Concept 4.5 and Concept 5). Let me see... my crackshot group of "audiophiles" consisted of no one who knew left from right as far as car audio. They could sell decks all day long because any knucklehead can sell a deck, don't bother with correctly done amp sub setups. Both locations had to literally hire THE WHOLE crew from Circuit City's to do installs, which like it has been said involved as much custom as you could do with a stationary grinder bolted to your plush attractive bench.

I remember when BB sold HiFonics, i was there a great Bastardization of a otherwise solid brand. Clarion... another great bastardization of an other wise solid brand. This was done through emphasis on lower end models and not carrying higher models. Ever wonder why so many people had Clarions up until about 2000? They got a cheap one from BB and like any cheap deck they broke which gave everyone "Man my/my buddy's Clarion broke every which way except for catching on fire in his Accord!"

I was a 12v Manager at CCity 1610 Roadshop and saw it go down hill when they went non commission. Alot of high end brands WILL NOT be in a non commission enviroment. Wonder why you couldn't get the full Alpine line at Circuit in 2004? They wouldn't let us carry it because it doesn't get accurate representation. Same thing with Kenwood Excelon/Pioneer Premier/Clarion Pro Audio/Directed Amplifier Brands.

I laughed because someone said that Tweeter is on the way out earlier in the post. My misguided little chumpski, you are wrong. First of all Tweeter and CarToys said to Alpine when this was all being finalized that both would drop Alpine if by having it at Best Buy we would have worse margins on it and if they carried the whole line. Which is why you will basically see what you saw at Circuit for 2004 at Best Buy in 2005. All the decks up to and possibly not even including the CDA-9831's, Type S speakers and Subs, Type E subs, V-power amps, A CVA1004, maybe maybe a IVAD300 Special Order, maybe a MRDM301 and a MRPF340. But thats it guys. No Type X, no Type R, No big V-12's, No IVAD901, None of their headrest monitors, No CDA-9835 or 9833's.

You have to remember you will never be able to change best buy's customer base. If they blue giant has gotten to you trust me it never included anyone who would consistantly buy high end alpine. You'll sell the hell out of 9827's and 9825's but then again who didn't? You won't have an Alpine rep minus once a year if even just to see that the product is out for the model year.

Alpine has and will always cater to Cartoys, Tweeter, and Ultimate Electronics becuase they have the customer base to time and time again consistantly drive higher end sells. Jesus my average ticket is 1200-1300 dollars and i'm not talking about mobile video. 1200 dollars for average ticket sales at BB 12v not including any mobile video will get you promoted to Manager and get you a district wide party. And trust me I use high end Alpine to do it. Best Buy bought Magnolia HiFi to try to add the small high end Tweeteresque element. And they have found that even though they own them and run them as separate companies they can't get the customer bases to cross.

I'm not losing any sleep of Best Buy diluting the market for Type E sub on v-power amps ran off a CDA-9825. You can't dilute that market, its gigantic. Those little chains that somehow sell a 549.99 Alpine V-12 4 Channel will always be there because Best Buy doesn't have the know how or customers to do that.

Thank You I felt so compelled to post that i signed up.
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So.... Best buy to carry low end Alpine in 05' right?

Interesting how this thread has evolved.  I almost jumped in a few times; however, some of you seem to have coverd eveything I would have said already, so blah!   : )