[Rembrandt]

"Ping has the right to choose the retail price of the clubs it sells. Retailers can't arbitraily choose a group of people and give them special rates (well, they can, but not if they made an agreement to sell a product at a certain price). My friend worked for Panasonic and had to sanction retailers who were blowing out their products since they needed to control the retail price and having one or two retail outlets underselling everyone else wasn't fair to the other retailers who abided by the agreement."
~~
Ever shopped at Sam's/WalMart? The retailer bears the risk of setting its own price, the wholesaler has no say and should have no say.

[Stone Mountain]

Ever shopped at Sam's/WalMart? The retailer bears the risk of setting its own price, the wholesaler has no say and should have no say.

Right. That's why you can't find Ping clubs at Walmart, or a bunch of other high end products. That's what makes Walmart Walmart - they have the clout to negotitiate deals that most retailers can't.

[Stone Mountain]

Incidentally, this is one of the main ways that WalMart and other huge chainsdrives smaller retailers out of business. For instance - my friend who was a Panasonic rep - they were (and are) having a hell of a time in Hawaii right now because Best Buy negotiated a huge deal through Panasonic directly where they get similar (to identical but renamed) Panasonic products but sell them for about or sometimes lower than the regular wholesale price. Best Buy can do this because they buy thousands of thousands of machines and can therefore negotiate a better price to buy and sell at than other retailers. But an independent retailer? No chance