From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Apr 18 14:42:46 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA05679 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 18 Apr 1997 14:42:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.50]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id OAA05674 for ; Fri, 18 Apr 1997 14:42:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id OAA02940; Fri, 18 Apr 1997 14:39:50 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199704182139.OAA02940@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: On Holy Wars, and a Plea for Peace [sorry Danny, wherever you are, but the title fits]... To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 14:39:50 -0700 (MST) Cc: steve@visint.co.uk, jbryant@tfs.net, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <19805.861384223@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Apr 18, 97 10:23:43 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk [ Wearing my ugly sales/marketing hat ] > I never meant to imply that we were the center of the universe, simply > that I'd seen the product in stores here. I can't speak for other > areas of the world simply because I don't live in those areas. QED. :-) Doesn't Walnut Creek CDROM have a GIS?!? I don't know how a modern sales organization could prosper without one... > I also talked with our sales manager yesterday about getting into more > retail stores and her comment was that we were definitely _trying_ to do > this on a more or less constant basis, but getting in bed with the Mafia > for a portion of their lucrative drug-and-sex trade is actually *easier* > than getting into some of these retail stores. They only buy from > certain distributors and those same distributors require some pretty > insane deals, including direct kick-backs and up-front subsidies > ("You give us $50,000 up-front and we'll agree to stock your product"). > > We're not quite big enough to support that kind of graft. :( Is this a "stocking fee" (illegal) or is it a consignment agreement (legal, but not the way you want to sell, if you sell by stuffing the channel and praying for rain...)? I could see Egghead wanting consignment. You have to shave them points to make up for it, but you *can* get them to buy. As to whether or not stuffing the channel and prayer are an appropriate way to sell, well... FreeBSD is (essentially) a UNIX-clone product... have you contacted the UNIX products division of Ingram Micro-D? Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.