Amiga and retail chains

[Psy]

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 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.

[Ral-Clan]

Amiga 500s, software and some peripherals were sold in K-Mart stores in Canada in the late 1980s.

[marcfrick2112]

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

[klx300r]

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

[amigadave]

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:

[weirdami]

I know for sure that Commodore 64's and Amiga 500's were sold in AAFES stores on US Air Force bases.

[juan_fine]

I got one of my 500s from J C Penney, back in the day -

[Ral-Clan]

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.

[ChuckT]

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.

[Crom00]

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..

[AmigaPete]

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

[persia]

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...

[DonnyEMU]

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.

[bloodline]

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...

[coldfish]

Yeah, AGA took the world by storm...