Word: distributor
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...only with the usual bewildering selection of cameras and lenses but also with a choice of prices for the same item. The popular Nikon FE-2 camera, for example, costs either $279.50 or $239.50. What's the difference? Top dollar buys a camera backed by an authorized U.S. Nikon distributor. For the lower price, a buyer gets the same machine but with only Bi-Rite's guarantee...
Welcome to the world of the gray market. Embraced by bargain hunters at the same time that it is cursed by conventional retailers, the gray market thrives by selling brand-name cameras, consumer electronics, personal computers, cars and even excavators without the imprimatur of a manufacturer's authorized distributor. The products do not have either the standard warranty or the higher markup. Unlike black-market trafficking in stolen or counterfeit goods, gray-market trade is perfectly legal and has even been encouraged by the Reagan Administration...
Enter the gray marketers. They buy their products in Europe, Asia and elsewhere instead of getting them from authorized U.S. distributors. K mart last year spent about $100 million on gray-market imports, including Swiss- made Accutron watches that it sells for less than $100, or about half the manufacturer's suggested price. Says Robert Stevenson, K mart vice president: "There is no reason to pay unreasonable prices to the manufacturer's U.S. distributor when you can obtain exactly the same products at lower cost overseas." Importers have even invaded the market for heavy machinery. Caterpillar excavators imported from France...
...certain rural areas of 21 states is a coin-operated vending machine that dispenses live bait to fishermen, and the force behind it is a supersalesman from Des Moines who found God in a federal penitentiary. The machine is called Vend-A-Bait, and, as one Texas distributor put it, "It's one great moneymakin' sucker." So, for that matter, is Vend-A-Bait Mogul Glenn McClintic; he drives a car longer than most people's memory...
...dynamic salesman, as McClintic is the first to add. Listen to the pitch: "You go out and find the proper distributor, a guy who knows the good fishing places. O.K., you say, show me some areas where you would like a 24- hr. bait house, because that's all it is really, a bait house. You sell it for $3,800. You take $300 down to assure yourself you have the order. You offer financing for $3,500. Payments of $120 a month to $150. This means Vend-A-Bait will cost the customer...