Re: NO HANDS FULL......

[P3D Gregory J. Wageman <gjw@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Clifford Davis writes:

>>I think that VM has their hands full making reels that sell "in the
>>hundreds of thousands" to worry about those that might sell 500 or so.

>This may be somewhat true for the TYCO division handling those reels,
>however if they were to set up a special interest division geared toward
>adults and handled maybe by an independant company holding licensing
>rights,then they could pull it off. Big Big record companies sell
>millions of records but they have special interest sub-labels that do
>small run stuff.

I think the problem is more in the distribution end.  Tyco only wants
to ship thousands of reels to chains like Toys 'R Us, who do their own
distribution to their stores.  It's not worth it to them to try to
distribute onesies and twosies to 10,000 vendors.

In the record business, there are "rack jobbers" who buy from the big
distributors (who in turn buy 100,000's of units from the record
companies), and service stores like K-Mart.  K-Mart leases the rack
space to the jobbers, who make sure the racks are filled with the latest
hot product.  K-Mart collects the money, keeps a percentage, and pays
the jobber.  That way, K-Mart doesn't have to employ a staff that keeps
track of what's selling and who's hot and who has a video coming out
on MTV, etc.  The jobber does that.

It seems to me that VM needs rack jobbers to maker sure the museum
stores and souvenier stands are stocked with the appropriate reels.

While were on the subject, the current issue of "Billboard" magazine has
an ad for R.E.M's latest album on the back cover.  The image is of a
forearm and hand holding up... a View-Master reel!  (Unfortunately
the images on the reel appear out-of-focus and are probably not actual
photographs anyway, so you can't free-view them.)

	-Greg
 


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