Dealers/Retailers What do you do when Vendor offers big discount direct.

[DavionGuard]

Virtue is running a deal for Spire IR2 + Ramp+ Crown for 99. Normally would be 129+29+12. I assume this happens in most retail markets, but I was wondering how it works in a smaller space with fewer vendors in the industry. I've been told margins are pretty low in the first place, so I assume this sort of discount would be near or below cost. I know getting screwed sometimes is part of the SBO gig, and It's easy to understand how other, bigger, stores can undercut with volume sales; but how do you deal with paintball vendors themselves leaving you holding the bag on these if you had a bunch of IR2s and accessories on the shelf?

Edit: for clarity on what im asking; Do you chew out your sales rep? Drop them? shrug and move on?

[Trbo323]

Hey thanks for the heads up

Sent from my motorola edge 5G UW (2021) using Tapatalk

[DavionGuard]

lol, no prob. I had just bought a loader on ebay for around 75 when the deal dropped. oh well.

[jokers]

So i am not sure what others are doing but punisher pb is running the same deal as virtue.

[DavionGuard]

Yeah. Suppose you can just match and take the bath to move it. Unless the margin is good enough eat the discount anyway. Wasnt thinking long term when I wrote the post, could also just ride it out and sell at regular point later in season since this is presumably temporary.
This sale just reminded me of when SP slashed the msrp on the ion and my local owner just had to eat it on his whole stock, then never stocked SP again. Not really the same situation but the memory popped in there.

[jokers]

Smart parts did a lot of shady stuff like that though. I have heard stories of them hiding under kids beds and when they were not doing that they liked to hide under bridges.

[jokers]

Might be thinking of the boogey men or trolls but pretty sure it is Smart Parts, no wait GOG, wait wait wait i know it is SP (shocker paintball), crap is it Luxe or DLX? I just can't keep up anymore.

[Magmoormaster]

This is a large part of why my former boss didn't carry Virtue stuff for years, despite them making genuinely good products.

[DavionGuard]

Yeah. They seems to do this a lot. It would be hard to stick their stuff with all these promos that run unless they passed some incentives to their dealers

[ford]

I reached out to a virtue vendor via email about a sale Virtue was running a year or two ago and whether or not they could match. They could not, but did offer me 15% off instead. That 15% wasn't quite as good as what Virtue's direct deal was, but I prefer going through a shop so I worked with them since they were willing to work with me.

From a consumer perspective I'm crazy hesitant to buy Virtue gear because I feel like unless I'm trying to buy during a sale and apply triple bonus discount codes I'm getting fleeced.