I'll say at the outset that I do not recall if Jeff Porter told me this story or Gerard Bucas. And, I don't recall if they were telling it to me as first hand or as second hand. But the story is a good lesson for business people and an interesting anecdote of Amiga history.
Commodore was negotiating with Motorola for purchasing of massive quantities of 68K CPUs and they hit a wall on price they just couldn't get past. Finally, the Motorola rep said look: We can't sell you 8 MHz parts at that price - we have an agreement with somebody else that says they get the lowest price we offer. If we give you the price you want we will have to lower our price on 8MHz parts to them too.
Commodore replied - Ah, but we don't want 8 MHz parts. We want 7.xxxx MHz parts.
And that's how Commodore got the price they needed. It was the same part of course, just labeled differently.
Lesson: Listen deeply to the other side and think creatively. Insurmountable obstacles can often be overcome.
p
