Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Psy on May 03, 2008, 02:49:58 AM
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It seems a common story for people in North America the Amiga was not carried in large retail chains when they (or their parents) were looking for their first PC.
To put this in comparison the Sega Master System (and its games) was more widely carried in retail chains then the Amiga (and its software) in North America.
I read this A history of the Amiga, part 5: postlaunch blues (http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/amiga-history-part-5.ars) and was shocked with this bit:
"The Commodore 64 had been sold at big retail chains like Sears and K-Mart, but marketing executives felt that the Amiga was better positioned as a serious business computer. Astoundingly, Commodore actually turned down Sears' offer to sell Amigas".
That seems just retarded.
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Amiga 500s, software and some peripherals were sold in K-Mart stores in Canada in the late 1980s.
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Well, never saw Amiga's for sale at any Major retailers, but B. Dalton's Software, Etc. sold 500's and software, pretty sure in the middle of 1988... of course, at this point, B. Dalton's was the only place in my area that sold computers, period. (that I knew of, anyway... hey I was like 18 at the time :-D
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ral-clan wrote:
Amiga 500s, software and some peripherals were sold in K-Mart stores in Canada in the late 1980s.
yup thats right! I got a fully boxed one still in my basement that has the KMart sticker on it..a whopping $649.99 on sale back in 1989 :-D
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I can't remember the exact year, but it must have been close to 1989 or 1990 when I was walking through a Montgomery Ward's store (remember them, they once competed head to head with Sears) when I came across an A500 in a slightly beat up box that had never been opened, just scuffed up from being moved from one shelf to another. I asked the person working in that department if he could get his manager so I could make an offer on it as the price was unclear and it was not showing up in the store computer inventory list. I think I got it for about $50 and asked them if they had any other related hardware or software for it hiding anywhere. The salesman tried to talk me out of buying it because he did not think I knew what it was (in his mind a doorstop). I don't think the Amiga got into hardly any mainstream retail outlets until it was too late. I usually had to drive 100 miles to find an computer store that carried anything for the Amiga and even less that carried Amiga computers themselves. And this was years before the bankruptcy. Commodore has no one but themselves for their failure and the failure of the Amiga to be sold in numbers 5 to 10 times higher than actual sales. :boohoo:
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I know for sure that Commodore 64's and Amiga 500's were sold in AAFES stores on US Air Force bases.
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I got one of my 500s from J C Penney, back in the day -
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Well, I guess all these stories disprove the original posters first point, then! The Amiga was carried in major retail chains in North America.
It was just poorly advertised & promoted.
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I think Commodore changed where they only wanted companies to sell the Amiga if they offered service. It is a noble idea but it meant that I had to drive all over creation to get my Amiga.
The banks got involved because there was a loan of a substantial amount of money and because of that they altered the business decisions. If you go to get a loan today, you have to show the banks a business plan and your loan gets approved on whether you have a good enough plan or not. My employer wanted a loan and we ended up building extra rooms for salespeople that my company never intended to employ just to satisfy the bank. I've been in some restaurants where they have very long grills that they don't need because the bank told them to have a business plan. In a sense, you don't get to make the sole decisions anymore and there are decisions which work for you and against you.
The restaurant pays for an extra long grill that they don't need because the bank wants to make sure that they can satisfy customer demand to pay the bills. Money is wasted and the company isn't efficient. The grill uses more energy than an efficient grill and it breaks down before the business needs a bigger grill.
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From what I remembe...They were trying to follow the Apple model of high priced sales instead of mass low cost sales.
What they failed to realize, Apple's/ IBMS virtually unlimited R&D funds and marketing bufget allow them to sell poop on a shingle with nice packaging and presentation to the masses... at premium prices.
They were also a victim of PC or Mac mentality that dominated the market. Businesses were not buying Amigas because commdore couldn't provide the infastructure to support the Amiga in a business market (laser printers, solid networking for enterprise solution, etc)
They only really got a foothold on vertical markets like video, and even that was underminded by the constant goofball assertations of the competition like "who needs 4096 colros?" or the Mac users claims were my favorite, they want right for the juggualar by saying... "The Amiga is outdated"
Apple and IBM supplied business solutions and did it better than commodore.
So when Joe executive wants a machine for the home, of course he's going to get a Mac or PC ,that's what they use at work, and hey they can just take software-hardware from work and use it at home, and that's the machine he'll recommend when a friend or relative asks what computer to get.
So instead of following the foundation that made them millions "Computers for the masses, not the classes" they abandoned it.
The Amiga didn't fit into this universe. Sad really when they had the world by the b*lls. I mean they had their own chip fab plants, they made the 6502 for everyone else.
Pretty crazy..
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Amiga 500s, software and some peripherals were sold in K-Mart stores in Canada in the late 1980s.
I remember seeing 500s available at Canadian Tire stores.
Pete
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Well if CBM would have spent some of the money on R&D rather than an extra long grill, maybe the would have gotten somewhere.
CBM could never have survived the competition, even if they could have seen the future. Actually there was, invest all their money in Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft stock...
(http://www.freakware.de/news/ps3-grill.jpg)
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It's interesting to hear that public perception but I worked for a dealer here in Michigan for nearly 5 years and this is what I remember about it.
Originally Commodore sold Pets to businesses and schools. You had to be a "PET" dealer to sell these monster metal behemoths. When the Vic-20 and C=64 came along at $300 and $600 respectively these were sold initially at dealers. Commodore made deals with retailers to sell these mass market during the holiday buying season which was so successful, they let their dealer network go by the wayside.
Commodore tried to revive the "business" market by offering the hardware to "Amiga Dealers" including some older Commodore 8-bit dealers. Commodore dealers survived on repairs and specialized software and hardware that wasn't sold elsewhere, because when the C=64 entered Toys R Us and Kmart dealers couldn't get them at the same quantity pricing that the big retailers were doing. Most left the market or kept hoping the dealers and the education dealers would get new hardware..
When the A1000 came along many dealers were upgraded to be Amiga dealers. The a1000 was supposed to be the business machine that multitasked and put the PC business in the box. The only problem is no business software actually existed at the time and it took Commodore a long time to get a stable operating system (version 1.1).. Stable also didn't mean functional.. When the Amiga was announced Lotus even came up and announced 1-2-3 for it and never delivered. A work a-like showed up about 1.5 years later with no where near the graphics 1-2-3 had been suggested to had..
Commodore realized that they needed to cost reduce the machine to stay competitive and they needed a more "consumer friendly" box to attract the folks on 6502s. At $1295 the A1000 just didn't hit the price point..
So a year passes the A500 and 2000 is announced the A2000 fixed PC compatibility issues of it's day with the "Bridgeboard" About that time they started showing up at mass retailers with the A500..
Before this happened though, a local dealership was given the right to sell refurbished A1000s at a cheaper price. This had two effects. 1) The other dealers couldn't compete or sell the volume and more expensive A1000s stayed on dealer shelves waiting for price drops and software to arrive..
Commodore gets version 1.2 of the OS ready and releases with the A500/2000 which has a greatly cost reduced board incorporating many CSG (Commodore SemiConductor Group) support chips. Many not seen on the A1000.
The A500 and 2000 puts the kibosh on A1000 sales. It finally puts the refurb dealer out of business. The reason the refurbs happened is Commodore got a number of non working a1000s back and they factory repaired and sent them back out..
The dealers at least have a big seller in A2000s..
C=128s continued sales and the 8 bit market was still strong until the 90s as a beginning computer. The Amiga never totally replaced that strategy.
The point is just to say Commodore didn't treat it's dealers well and caused problems for them, some just trying really hard to survive..
There was no professional marketing in the USA.. Most efforts were done on price and that was a joke. Also competition with the various "versions" of Commodore in different countries was problematic though too..They were all independent mostly from each others management.
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persia wrote:
Well if CBM would have spent some of the money on R&D rather than an extra long grill, maybe the would have gotten somewhere.
CBM could never have survived the competition, even if they could have seen the future. Actually there was, invest all their money in Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft stock...
I will maintain that if Commodore had sold an ISA Multimedia board with the Amiga GFX and Audio on it, back in the late 1980s, they would now be a massive player in the GFX market... something like NVidia are now...
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Yeah, AGA took the world by storm...
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coldfish wrote:
Yeah, AGA took the world by storm...
I assume that was directed to me...
I am suggesting that in 1987, when the A2K and the A500 were released. If Commodore had also put out a Multimedia ISA board, that would have been a great way to start a PC standard multimedia platform... in 87, most peolle would still have wanted an A500 for games... but if the PC world had access to identical spec gfx/audio as the Amiga... game developers would have had an easy time porting games over from the Amiga and the ST... so they would support it... thus if the market that the A500 and the ST were aimed at ever went titz up... Commodore would still have had a revenue stream...
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ral-clan wrote:
Well, I guess all these stories disprove the original posters first point, then! The Amiga was carried in major retail chains in North America.
It was just poorly advertised & promoted.
It doesn't show that the Amiga had the same retail support as the Sega Master System (that was a failed console in North America), just look at amigadave's post
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bloodline wrote:
coldfish wrote:
Yeah, AGA took the world by storm...
I assume that was directed to me...
I am suggesting that in 1987, when the A2K and the A500 were released. If Commodore had also put out a Multimedia ISA board, that would have been a great way to start a PC standard multimedia platform... in 87, most peolle would still have wanted an A500 for games... but if the PC world had access to identical spec gfx/audio as the Amiga... game developers would have had an easy time porting games over from the Amiga and the ST... so they would support it... thus if the market that the A500 and the ST were aimed at ever went titz up... Commodore would still have had a revenue stream...
It would have been better if Commodore pushed the Amiga 500 and later Amiga 1200 as hard as Sega pushed the Sega Genesis. Get the Amiga 500 and later Amiga 1200 in as many store shelves and get better system box designs so they catch the eye on store shelfs.
If it worked then developers would have supported the Amiga simply because of the user base.
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Psy wrote:
bloodline wrote:
coldfish wrote:
Yeah, AGA took the world by storm...
I assume that was directed to me...
I am suggesting that in 1987, when the A2K and the A500 were released. If Commodore had also put out a Multimedia ISA board, that would have been a great way to start a PC standard multimedia platform... in 87, most peolle would still have wanted an A500 for games... but if the PC world had access to identical spec gfx/audio as the Amiga... game developers would have had an easy time porting games over from the Amiga and the ST... so they would support it... thus if the market that the A500 and the ST were aimed at ever went titz up... Commodore would still have had a revenue stream...
It would have been better if Commodore pushed the Amiga 500 and later Amiga 1200 as hard as Sega pushed the Sega Genesis. Get the Amiga 500 and later Amiga 1200 in as many store shelves and get better system box designs so they catch the eye on store shelfs.
If it worked then developers would have supported the Amiga simply because of the user base.
Advertising alone would have been difficult I think... Marketing the Amiga was always a problem...I wasn't a game console, but it fitted into that market... it wasn't a Business computer, but it fitted into that market... it was basically a home computer, much like the AppleII or the C64 or the Sinclair Spectrum... but it was better than those machines, but incompatible with their software bases... and was more expensive...
From Geek perspective the Amiga is a dream come true... but to the average joe... in the late 80s computer were specialist items... purchased for a specific purpose... The Amiga didn't really make sense to the public at large... The computer revolution really took off in 1995... The Amiga could have sparked that off much earlier, but Commodore didn't have the marketing knowhow/vision.
But what it did have was some great technology, and it could have licensed that to third party... Didn't Sun try and license the tech, but were refused? I rest my case...
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Advertising alone would have been difficult I think... Marketing the Amiga was always a problem...I wasn't a game console, but it fitted into that market... it wasn't a Business computer, but it fitted into that market... it was basically a home computer, much like the AppleII or the C64 or the Sinclair Spectrum... but it was better than those machines, but incompatible with their software bases... and was more expensive...
From Geek perspective the Amiga is a dream come true... but to the average joe... in the late 80s computer were specialist items... purchased for a specific purpose... The Amiga didn't really make sense to the public at large... The computer revolution really took off in 1995... The Amiga could have sparked that off much earlier, but Commodore didn't have the marketing knowhow/vision.
But what it did have was some great technology, and it could have licensed that to third party... Didn't Sun try and license the tech, but were refused? I rest my case...
It could have been marketed as a home computer, it was cheaper then a IBM clone yet could do everything a home user wanted to do. Commodore could have kicked off the computer revolution through marketing the Amiga just like how Nintendo rebuilt the game console market by marketing the NES.
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weirdami wrote:
I know for sure that Commodore 64's and Amiga 500's were sold in AAFES stores on US Air Force bases.
Yup. And a lot in corner business computer stores. In the South Forks Shopping Plaza (IIRC) in Grand Forks, there was a little store across from the Radio Shack which displayed an Amiga 500, and I believe a 2000 later on. That was the only place I ever saw them, while the K-Mart in the same plaza had a Commodore 64 running its trademark demo disk, and a TI-99/4A with Peripheral Expansion Box and a slew of game cartridges on braided metal wires.
Hey, did you grab any of the spec sheets the BX/PX had on the Amiga? VERY professional looking advertisements. I think they also had ones for the C128, 64C and C-series peripherals. I had a bunch, and think they've been in storage so long that they'll be in horrid condition once I find them.
Reminds be, one of the guys that worked in the computer section had an Atari Portfolio. I think they sold STs also.
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In Ontario, there were several stores to purchase Amiga such as Comspec, Canadian Tire and various mall stores. However, Commodore did goof up in their overall strategy!
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I remember at the Eglin AFB, FL AAFES they had a large computer store with lots of Amiga 500's and 2000's, along with PC's of course. It was awesome. I even got a friend of mine to buy a A500 during that time. (1991)
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@Crom00
The Amiga didn't fit into this universe. Sad really when they had the world by the b*lls. I mean they had their own chip fab plants, they made the 6502 for everyone else.
Pretty crazy..
Even more crazy was that they had their own LCD plant, an LCD portable machine and a big enough order to kickstart a new market for themselves.
The boss of Radio Shack convinced Marshall Smith that there was no market for such a system, so he threw all that away.
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And Canadian Tire too, if I remember correctly!
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When did Canadians start spelling "tire" like the Yanks?
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Well how many Amigas did Commodore sell? Amiga Format in 1993 stated shy of 5 million Amigas were sold, if true it means the Amiga sales were at par with the sales of the MSX, so Commodore really really had a huge issue of not moving units no where enough units for the Amiga to ever hope to be a viable platform.
Hell Sega was able to sell 6.5 million SegaCDs while shooting themselves in the foot with marketing and SegaCD was a far tougher sell ($300 mostly just to get Genesis ports with better music and only a few good games) then the Amiga.
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I remeber in the uk Game http://www.game.co.uk/ used to stock amiga systems and games. Also Electronics Boutique http://www.ebgames.com/ and Special Reserve how are now no trading.
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bloodline wrote:
coldfish wrote:
Yeah, AGA took the world by storm...
I assume that was directed to me...
I am suggesting that in 1987, when the A2K and the A500 were released. If Commodore had also put out a Multimedia ISA board, that would have been a great way to start a PC standard multimedia platform... in 87, most peolle would still have wanted an A500 for games... but if the PC world had access to identical spec gfx/audio as the Amiga... game developers would have had an easy time porting games over from the Amiga and the ST... so they would support it... thus if the market that the A500 and the ST were aimed at ever went titz up... Commodore would still have had a revenue stream...
If they did that them sure, Commodore would still be here.
But the Amiga platform would have died a lot earlier and sped up the process of PC migration.
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It was never easy to find amiga stuff and if my cousin hadn't shown me his A1000 I probably would never have known about the Amiga. I used it once and I was hooked so I was willing to drive ridiculous distances to feed my passion. I honestly did have to go to extremes at times to upgrade or purchase something. But there was just something so special about not just the machine but also the programs and programmers writting for it. Whenever I did find a store that had Amigas they rarely had anyone working there who knew how to boot them up and show a demo or game or anything. The stores that did have them running usually had people waiting in line to try out Lemmings or were standing there with jaw dropped watching a NewTek Demo. I remember when Walden Software was selling A600's so cheap that I was actually buying them up and re-selling them for a slight profit. Sure miss those days.
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I hardly ever read/post here - but should since the Amiga newsgroups are all but dead now!
Not to sound like a certain political figure that claimed they started the Internet (that's all people got out of it, when in reality, he stated that he was on a panel that were outlining the specs for it), BUT anyway... true story: back in the day, was married to a gal who's father was a VP of Montgomery Ward (was a coincidence really that we hooked up and then later went to work for Wards). Anyway, I sold computers and the like for two of their stores back in the late 80's: Touhy Ave @ Village Crossing Niles and Lakehurst Mall, Waukegan - both in IL of course. Was always into the Amiga since the 1000 and talked incessantly about how we should carry them at our stores. Between having a great rapport with my Electric Avenue manager/VP Father in-law/Bernie Brennan (CEO of Wards at the time) and our computer buyer - they took a chance with Commodore again and we FINALLY started distributing the A500! Boy - almost wish we didn't because... the 8088/286 computer puds at the time gave me sooo much {bleep} about it! lol Monkey Wards did a {bleep}e job of "promoting" the system and nobody besides me knew a damn thing about them - in our store anyway, and yeah... whenever I would call others stores to inquire about stock, etc. was like talking to a wall. Everyone thought of the Amiga as just a fancy arcade game system - partly thanks to Commodore's reputation with the 64 previously I guess. Wards really didn't help matters at all due to lack of proper training, poor in stock scenarios and NO peripherals - besides maybe a 1080 or 1084. No extra ram, no disk drives, etc. Still - this was during a time where IBM PeeCee's were selling for $2k-$4k and nobody wanted to take the Amiga seriously at less than $1k for a complete system!! Yes, there WAS a time where people wanted to spend more money on something and they were proud/would brag about how much they spent!! (opposite to todays Wal-Mart mentality) - boy, I really do miss the good old days.
Anywho... I *DID* a helluva job (comparatively) selling A500's through my store(s) as I would bring in demo's, etc. from my personal collection. If I remember correctly, whoever sold an Amiga would get around 5%-6% commission off it. A "quick" $60 in your pocket if you could convince somebody to spend less money on a personal computer for a vastly superior product. Yes - did accidentally sell the occasional PC once in a while (their commission % paid out even better actually), but I'm telling you... that customer had to REALLY want one of them if they were going to have me ring it up (always hated 'em and to this day, refuse to own one)!! lol
If we would have carried that trapdoor 286 IBM clone for the A500, along with HD storage for it at the time, I would have been able to bundle a killer system for those that wanted a PC AND a Miggy. And come to think of it, that's something else that really hurt the Amiga. HD storage was expensive and pretty non-existent for the Amiga 500. We certainly did not sell anything remotely close to "productive" for the system and the fact that you had to "add" all of the standard computer necessities at the time and have some of this {bleep} sitting outside your computer TI 99 style (disk drives, hard drive, more memory, clock/calendar, etc.) turned soooo many people off from taking the Amiga plunge. Shame really that Ward's went the A500 route, but I remember that the big wigs did NOT want an Amiga 2000 due to that system NOT being very competitive with a PeeCee clone at the time. Too bad really because a good salesperson like me :-) WOULD have been able to push it. Especially with a Bridgeboard and HD combo.
The other Commodore product I was trying to get them to carry (our Village Crossing store was THE test store for the rest of Wards btw) was the CDTV. But with the "poor" gross margins and sales of the Amiga - they decided to go with the Philips CDi instead!! That system was total crap compared to the CDTV of course, but the Philips reps/negotiators were WAY more professional than Commodore's and they understood marketing. Long and short of it, Philips did a better job of convincing corporate and honestly, even to this day, Philips STILL supports that damn system with software - both entertainment and training wise. I have a buddy that *STILL* received a catalogue from them for CDi stuff! lol
Thanks for reading - it was good to share this before I lose any more of my memory and my mind living in these backwards times!! lol
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The last time I bought an Amiga related product was 2 months ago and it was in Barnes & Noble: Rise and Fall of Commodore Book by Brian Bagnall.
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It was such a different story here in the UK. Amigas were available everywhere, every games store sold Amiga games.
My local EB (now Game) was still selling Amiga games in late 1998. Amiga Format was widely available in most major newsagents up until it closed. All WH Smiths seemed to carry Amiga Active until the end too (2001).
I had a part-time job working in a Currys store while I was doing my A-Levels (back in 2000). One day, out of curiosity I did a search on the DSG (Currys/Dixons/PC World) stock system for Amiga - and to my surprise, there were still some Amiga systems (mostly A1200s) still hanging about.
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@ uncharted
I remember when I was younger my dad took me to Game to buy my first console and I had a choice between A1200 Magic Pack (no cd32's seemed to be about even tho that was my first choice), A snes or a playstion. My dad forced me to get a playstation as he said amiga was dead. I got the playstation, got it chipped and broke the lazer :P so i went back to amiga. Its rather surreal remembering that all those very different consoles rivaling each other in the shop.
I also remember in Whsmith they used to stock Amiga Format, Cu Amiga, Amiga Shopper. The shelves where very full of amiga :D Now I go in grab the copy of micromart and check out that half page 'amiga mart'. Its sad that amiga active went bankrupt. Its still good to see amiga news on the stand no matter how small.
I also remeber an amiga shop in derby or mansfield or somewhere in the midlands. It was very professional and rammed full of games and systems. I was rather young so I cannot remeber anymore details.
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Psy wrote:
It seems a common story for people in North America the Amiga was not carried in large retail chains when they (or their parents) were looking for their first PC.
To put this in comparison the Sega Master System (and its games) was more widely carried in retail chains then the Amiga (and its software) in North America.
I read this A history of the Amiga, part 5: postlaunch blues (http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/amiga-history-part-5.ars) and was shocked with this bit:
"The Commodore 64 had been sold at big retail chains like Sears and K-Mart, but marketing executives felt that the Amiga was better positioned as a serious business computer. Astoundingly, Commodore actually turned down Sears' offer to sell Amigas".
That seems just retarded.
Yes, I do believe that Irving Gould was retarded from all the alcohol, jet-setting and who knows what else. What else could explain hiring a consultant to not only analyze your company but then later run it. Now that's retarded.
The other thing Commodore did under Jack Tramiel was to allienate large computer resellers by selling their products for less in retail chains. It's fine to sell in KMart and Sears but when you do - you better offer the big computer retailers some form of rebate or something to make it fair.
From what they say in the book, The Edge, That is not how Jack thought. He had no concept of long term relationships. Just what have you done for me lately. Which isn't only evident in Commodore's early dealing with other companies but with how many Excellent Employees, left to work elsewhere.
Can you imagine if Commodore had simply left open it's development facilities, retained all of it's best Engineers and fostered good relationships with dealers and retailers? I can't because it would be a completely different world.
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ral-clan wrote:
Well, I guess all these stories disprove the original posters first point, then! The Amiga was carried in major retail chains in North America.
It was just poorly advertised & promoted.
The A500/A2000 were not officially carried in retail chains in the United States. The Canadian counterpart of Commodore did allow KMart Canada to carry them. Just about every other Commodore Office in the World was allowed to do a better job of marketing and positioning Commodore products than the US division.
I think management was too close to the US offices to keep their hands from messing it all up.
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Rob wrote:
@Crom00
The Amiga didn't fit into this universe. Sad really when they had the world by the b*lls. I mean they had their own chip fab plants, they made the 6502 for everyone else.
Pretty crazy..
Even more crazy was that they had their own LCD plant, an LCD portable machine and a big enough order to kickstart a new market for themselves.
The boss of Radio Shack convinced Marshall Smith that there was no market for such a system, so he threw all that away.
Yeah, who needs hindsight to tell them - never listen to a competitor when it comes to what to release. Especially, when that competitor is the largest vendor in the market of the item you plan to compete with.
Now that is bone-headed. I mean really, who needs to look back and say - geez, I guess I should have release a portable computer based on completely virtically integrated technology, even the LCD, to compete with other vendors in that marketspace?
On top of that, this single decision and the elimination of C='s LCD abilities was likely one of the reasons that no portable Amiga was released.