Kentucky | BSchroeder - 3/21/2008 10:48
And, FWIW, your dealer was feeding you a load of crap about the 'return and relabel' thing. No way I buy that.
My experience is that dealers do NOT want to sit on inventory from year to year without getting paid storage on it. They are more than happy to return the product to avoid interest costs on inventory. Local dealers are "distributors" operating on narrow margins to store and distribute product for the manufacturer. I don't think that most consider themselves in the speculation business as to what product this year will sell for next year. When I was a rep, dealers loved inventory protection and/or return privileges. If the dealers Headline was inventory protected, it could have been left at the dealership and STILL had a price increase. Depending on BASF's program, the "relabeling" could be totally irrelevant. I'm not trying to take sides. I'm only saying that dealers are notorious for looking for a scape goat. Sometimes this means that you only get part of the story. If that dealer had to sit on a large amount of Headline from last year, would he have not wanted to raise the price to cover his investment? |
BASF increases HEADLINE $22
