France's biggest Apple reseller shuts up shop Lawsuits are all that remain of France's biggest Apple reseller after no credible bidders came forward to save the business. eBizcuss officially went into liquidation on 31 July, after 36 years of trading. We understand that there were at least two offers for the reseller but none were sufficient to save the business. eBizcuss …
I could see how such a case could be argued. As authorised resellers the company and the staff are effectively franchisees of the Apple brand. If Apple have acted unfairly in refusing to supply stock to the company so that they may act as a reseller, then a good lawyer would no doubt be able to argue that Apple are responsible for their resellers.
Apple weren't making computers for consumers when eBizcuss opened their doors in 1976, so how could they argue that their business blunders are Apple's fault?
That's one of the things that all business managers should understand: running your own company is a calculated risk. You don't get to blame others for your errors of judgement. There are any number of retailers all over the planet who are also Apple Authorised Resellers, but they didn't make the mistake eBizcuss did of relying so heavily on supplies from Apple. What they should have done was diversify and sell products and services that Apple customers might want, but which they wouldn't necessarily find at an Apple Store. Apple Stores have recently ditched a lot of boxed software, for example. They tend to focus on a very small range of peripherals too, so if you can offer stuff Apple can't, or won't, sell you themselves, you've got a market niche to play in.
Putting all your eggs in one basket is an idiotic business plan. eBizcuss deserved to fail.
not quite as cut and shut. They may have become an apple authorised reseller in year X and had a caveat that in order to do business with apple they must exclusively stock their products or maybe a high percentage etc. If this is true and apple sqeezed the supply to the store then there will be a decent case. Might not be so simple as "should have stocked other things" they might not have been contractually able to.
Indeed, back in the 80s when I was in the business, to be an Apple Centre you had to be (near enough) dedicated to Apple and associated 3rd party products. In return for better margins, you had to adhere to a very strict contract that prohibited competing products (so no IBM PCs allowed at all) and even went as far as specifying the (very expensive) wallpaper to be used.
Even a standard dealer contract imposed significant restrictions. I can tell you that Apple were a really nasty company to deal with, though it would be be legally risky if I in any way inferred that they might be inclined to bend the rules in their favour.
I don't know what the current contracts include (thankfully I've been out of it for many years), but if they are anything like the old Apple Centre contracts then the case would have merit - you can't insist on someone dedicating resources to your product to the exclusion of diversity, and then starve them of said product.
It seems to me that Apple is strangling independent Apple dealers anyplace they have Apple Stores. There were two near here that have been around since the Apple II days, but they are gone now.
New product comes out, they have to agree to buy a large number to get the price they need to compete. But they don't get any until the Apple store and Best Buy (who have lots of stock) have saturated the market.
Apple used to be a niche product, and you would have to travel to get to one of these very swish, very expensive retailers, often paying a lot more than the list price.
Nowadays, Apple has stores in most major cities, and even where they don't, you can go into a PC World and buy an ipad or a macbook. Everyone - well, anyone buying apple kit - also has access to the internet to order these things directly from Apple if they want.
Put simply, these resellers are an anachronism representing such a tiny proportion of Apple's sales that other channels should have priority for new products. Why should Apple have to hold back stock from a major distributor to give to a minor reseller?
As the first poster indicated, it depends first on the terms of the contract, and secondarily up Apple's actual behavior. If Apple preferentially supplied material to the Big Box stores, I think they have a case regardless of the contract given that it is France. If the contract specified any sorts of benefits to the stores for being exclusively Apple outlets and Apple didn't deliver on those promises, even a redneck capitalist like me is going to tell them to get out the checkbook and put lots of zeros between the last of the non-zero front digits and the end of number demarcation.
These were the true apple fans that kept shop open 10 years ago, when apple was in real dire streets. Their success inspired apple shops.
I remember these shops, they tried to make it cozy with colorful lounges, and were quite friendly and passionate. I never was an apple customer (until the first iPhone), but I was thinking these guys were as crazy as courageous to stick with apple back then. They were seeing light where no one was. (I don't speak about this company in particular, but all little apple re-sellers around Europe).
Business is no charity, but I think apple was quite ruthless there.
I'm lucky that my local reseller is part of a larger store that is too big to be strangled out. At a reseller I usually get a person who knows what the hardware is and can answer technical questions. At the Apple store I usually get gormless cretins who know the software well enough but seem to think the case is full of magic pixies. Tell one of them you not only upgraded your hard drive and ram yourself but that you used non Apple kit, and watch the hysterics. Its hilarious. You find out fast about the iffy content of "Genius" in Genius bars. The last one took almost half an hour to figure out if I violated my warranty. Nobody had ever asked before.
Every Apple store I've dealt with seems to run 10 of these people to one actual knowledgeable technician. And if you NEED the tech you have to con them into dragging him out of the back room.
But on the other had I had to buy my summer 2012 Macbook Pro from an Apple store, as my reseller of choice, "Microcenter" didn't get the new machines at release. I expect this is a trend. When I told the Apple store I usually went to a reseller, I got lectured about why that was a bad idea and "Why would I ever do that?" I should have told him why. I want my coffee from a Barista, not my computers. That's not really fair, at least a Barista knows whats in their product.........
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