Dolmar 7900 Report = NICE!, AMICK'S Rave too...

[Edge & Engine]

As an interesting note, I just tried calling the FTC to see if there were any sorts of policies about this, as it seems like it could potentially be considered an "anti-competitive practice"... (Whether or not the gov't should be interfering in the market in such a way is a seperate issue...)

I may not have asked the right question, but they said there are no rules dealing with internet sales, as the internet is essentially not regulated.

Perhaps a better question might be does a company have the right to keep it's dealers from shipping their products to a distant consumer? In a lot of ways the internet aspect is irrelevant - it seems the rules are really against shipping the product long distances - regardless of how one actually ordered the product or heard about the fact that a dealer was selling it. Indeed I actually purchased my saw over the phone (there was stuff I wanted that wasn't on the website) even though a lot of my information gathering was online... From comments, it sounds like some of the other shipping dealers got into trouble for putting saws in paper catalogs, or even just selling over the phone rather than in person....

Gooserider

Good. Uncle Sam has his dirty hands in enough of stuff already. Decisions like that should be left up to the company.

 

[Haywire Haywood]

I won't beat around the bush either.

Well, I don't like what you did but at least you're man enough to admit it and explain your reasoning. For that at least you have my respect.

You might think there's a lot of people here but my guess is the amount of saws sold through this site aren't a blip on the screen for you or any of the sponsors here. What's 10 saws a year gonna hurt? It's not hurting your bottom line unless he happens to sell to someone in your area. He's helping Dolmar by getting their name and product out to areas that either don't have a local dealer or have one of those "dealer in name only" places that will be happy to order anything you want. My local dealer is like that. He has 3 510s on the shelf and a stack of brochures. I see Tony as just supporting the regular members of this saw community. Technically he was wrong but who is right 100% of the time? Not me, not you. Was it really worth damaging his relationship with Dolmar to be able to point the finger and say "Look what he's doing, why can't I do that?" If selling a saw or three through this forum is against your morals, then don't.. but don't stand in the corner and throw stones at those who are willing to help a guy out.

There. I've said my piece in what I hope wasn't an offensive manner.
Ian

 

[maccall]

Do you pay for your dolmar saws when you order them? If you do, then you actually own the saws.. You, By the laws of our great country can do anything you want with them.Sell them for a dollar over cost, give them away or whatever.
Now if you were just warehousing their saws until you sell one, I can see them telling you what to do with them.
Maybe instead of ratting Tony out to Dolmar you should have just got on the bandwagon?

Of course you can do what you want with the saws you bought and own, including selling them om the Internet. You can even do that with Stihl. Once. But then, at some time you find you want to re-stock. That's when it hurts...

 

[wanab]

Good dealers are not threatened by catalog or internet sales of chainsaws. Most progressive dealerships can benefit from box store sales also. A dealer return on investment is minimal on a chainsaw sale, and maximum on parts and service. Dealers willing to market toward their maximum profit margin (parts and service) will do much better than those who rely on the sales of power unit themselves. Dealers who are shipping saws are just trying to broaden their customer base in order to sell more parts and service. As stated above, many folks are willing to drive long distances to get good service, just think how many more customers progressive servicing dealers would gain if they were able to ship saws without issue.

i have been thinking about this for some time now since husky pulled your plug.

seems if E$E was not shipping saws other than them having peeps come to them with internet prices wanting saws i dont think they could have lost that many sales to Amick's.

the first thing i thought when this happened is they are upset their losing customers buying residuals to Amick's exceptional customer service.

if anything you have created sympathy for Amick's and made yourself look petty IMHO.

and Dolmar, think hard about what i said, if you want to compete with S and H you need more recognition and saws out in the woods and thats was what you were getting. unless your an enthusist its dolmar who? i dont know many peeps that ever even heard of you.




P. S. my comments are not directed at Bailey's.

 

[Ole Farmerbuck]

i have been thinking about this for some time now since husky pulled your plug.

seems if E$E was not shipping saws other than them having peeps come to them with internet prices wanting saws i dont think they could have lost that many sales to Amick's.

the first thing i thought when this happened is they are upset their losing customers buying residuals to Amick's exceptional customer service.

if anything you have created sympathy for Amick's and made yourself look petty IMHO.

and Dolmar, think hard about what i said, if you want to compete with S and H you need more recognition and saws out in the woods and thats was what you were getting. unless your an enthusist its dolmar who? i dont know many peeps that ever even heard of you.




P. S. my comments are not directed at Bailey's.

+1 Good post

 

[bcorradi]

IMO for Dolmar to become a serious player they need to find an inrow with the pro market. Without a fairly substantial B&M network I do not think this is possible. We can argue how many professional users value local dealer service vs the ones that are content with working on their own saws and doing everything via mail order. However, I would have to guess a higher percentage does value the services/parts a local dealer provides than those that do not. The pro market is where the money is vs the enthusiast or homeowner market. It takes a very large number of enthusiasts/homeowners to equate to the $ spent by your average pro user. I've only owned one dolmar personally and thought fairly highly of it. Those that do have a good Dolmar dealer within driving distance should feel fortunate. I think the quality and prices are comparable if not better than their husky, jonsered, and stihl counterparts. In the end, fierce competition amongst these manufacturers yields improvements we as the end user benefit from.

 

[ciscoguy01]

Omg

What on earf have I missed here??? hehehehehehehe

opcorn:

 

[Gooserider]

I agree, and if my local dealer, who didn't stock 7900's but did claim to stock other Dolmars, had a price that was within say $50 of Amick's he probably would have gotten my business, $70, maybe... But the dealers I checked ranged from $750 to over $1,000 just for the powerhead - seems excessive... Amick's also had a few deals on other things that I probably wouldn't have made a special order for, but was able to have Tony throw in the box for the same freight....

But I am a homeowner, not the pro market that I agree is where Dolmaree needs to make inroads. So what does having cheap online sales do? IMHO the pro by definition is going to already have a favorite brand of saw, probably either H or S... The big challenge is to get the pro to TRY the other brand, and the only way you are likely to do that is to
1. Get enough saws into other pro's hands to get some reputation built so that there is a reason for the target pro to be interested in giving the brand a try.
2. Make the price enough lower than the favorite brand comparable model to make it worth the pro's time to try the experiment.
(You have to do both, as I doubt you could get the pro's into "Pull-ons" :jawdrop: even if they were free...)

IMHO Dolmar seems to have done a pretty good job on number one...

If the local dealer is charging the same sort of price for the new brand as the existing favorite, the pro has no real incentive to try the new one... At least the Discount Shipper provides the 2nd ingredient.

If the local dealer doesn't discount to match the discount shipper, he may be hurt somewhat as the DS will get the saw sale, but the service is likely to come to his shop, and ditto for parts and accessories to the same extent that it would have for the original brand.

Without the DS, If the local dealer does multiple brands, then there is no incentive to discount because his pro-customers are likely to buy their existing favorite, and the profit stays about the same.

The Single brand shop is probably going to have to deep discount anyway, in order to attract the pro's from the competion's shop, but because they have lower volumes, they are likely to have a harder time doing a deep discount. In their case, the discount shipper costs them the small margin they might have otherwise made on the new saw sale, but benefits them by getting more saws of their brand into circulation where they will need parts, service and accessories...

The only real "Pain Point" for the local dealer is possibly warranty work, depending on how generous Dolmar is with their compensation for that - If I were in the Dolmar shoes, I would think that the best way to balance that is to put right in the warranty that the selling dealer is expected to cover parts and labor, while any non-selling dealer is obligated to cover only parts... This would provide an incentive for the customer to go to the local dealer for the new saw, or provide a profit to the local dealer if he went to the DS...

Gooserider

IMO for Dolmar to become a serious player they need to find an inrow with the pro market. Without a fairly substantial B&M network I do not think this is possible. We can argue how many professional users value local dealer service vs the ones that are content with working on their own saws and doing everything via mail order. However, I would have to guess a higher percentage does value the services/parts a local dealer provides than those that do not. The pro market is where the money is vs the enthusiast or homeowner market. It takes a very large number of enthusiasts/homeowners to equate to the $ spent by your average pro user. I've only owned one dolmar personally and thought fairly highly of it. Those that do have a good Dolmar dealer within driving distance should feel fortunate. I think the quality and prices are comparable if not better than their husky, jonsered, and stihl counterparts. In the end, fierce competition amongst these manufacturers yields improvements we as the end user benefit from.

 

[Haywire Haywood]

Good points all. One thing tho, I was under the assumption that warranty repairs were reimbursed to the dealer through the company. Maybe it's at a lower rate than they would normally charge for labor though. My local John Deere dealer used to also have Husqvarna lawn mowers but he dropped them because he said that he was losing too much money on warranty repairs.

Ian

 

[sugarbush]

Gooserider,

I didn't believe the prices you posted, so looked up dealers in your area.
there's a ton of them. about 30 with-in 30 miles.
I'm still in shock after talking to three. First one quoted $799/20", said it came that way and would have to do some checking if power head only. --- one told me the 7900 was a biggg saw with a powerfull 64cc engine. I hope some of my customers are following this thread, (or maby not.) they may think my saws are stolen at the prices there paying.

 

[Gooserider]

One of the things I ran into was that several of the "dealers" I talked to were not at all familiar with the saws. From the way they talked, it was clear that I knew more about the Dolmar product line from looking at the Dolmar factory website than they did...:monkey:

Apparently they were going by a catalog put out by some distributor that had a misprint in it, it apparently identified the 7900 as being 64cc, and the 9010 as the 79cc model (s/b 90cc) - I could understand that from my local OPE guy, who wasn't an official dealer, but could order them through his distributor, as I wouldn't expect him to know Dolmar's product line, most of his work is on snowblowers and lawn equipment... But I would have expected an "official dealer" (I got my dealers list from the Dolmar website) to know the lines he sells, especially since it doesn't look to me like the Dolmar has all that many models, and their numbers are easy to figure out (Unlike H&S who seem to have far more models, with numbers that don't have a clear and consistent relationship to the saws) However I ran into at least two dealers that had the same confusion, and both said they were going "by the book" in the specs they were quoting.

NONE of the local dealers had a 7900 in stock, a few sounded like they might have had the 6400 in stock, but I didn't verify that.

The dealer that was closest to me, actually was the one that sounded most clueful, and had the best of the local prices, but didn't seem willing to get down into the competitive price range or do any other "sweetening" on the deal that would have amounted to the same thing - He also wanted $25 / loop for chains (Tony was $12 and $19 for 20" and 28" loops) but was about the same on some of the other stuff I wanted.

Gooserider

 

[sugarbush]

Gooserider,

I didn't believe the prices you posted, so looked up dealers in your area.
there's a ton of them. about 13 with-in 60 miles.
I'm still in shock after talking to three. First one quoted $799/20", said it came that way and would have to do some checking if power head only. --- one told me the 7900 was a biggg saw with a powerfull 64cc engine. I hope some of my customers are following this thread, (or maby not.) they may think my saws are stolen at the prices there paying.

I corrected my dealer figures, when looking at all the flags, appeared like more then what it was. but the area is well represented. But prices are much differant then here. (Minn.)

 

[166]

Sugarbush & E&E whats your sell price on a 7900 20" Powermatch? Ours is $699 but may increase a little bit with the price increase from Dolmar.

Steve

 

[bcorradi]

Sugarbush - I haven't actually looked online at the dealer locator...but I assume your the closest Dolmar dealer to DL? I don't think I'm too far from you and I may have to stop by some time to check out your shop.

 

[sugarbush]

Sugarbush & E&E whats your sell price on a 7900 20" Powermatch? Ours is $699 but may increase a little bit with the price increase from Dolmar.

Steve

not sure if I should post that or not, not being a sponser, but, $649 with 20" bar and I would be higher but no employee's to facter in. still I should be higher.

so much of my business is referrals from past customers and friends, it makes it difficult to change the price. but it's time.

 

[Edge & Engine]

Sugarbush & E&E whats your sell price on a 7900 20" Powermatch? Ours is $699 but may increase a little bit with the price increase from Dolmar.

Steve

$729

 

[04ultra]

$729

Wow................................................




Whats your price on a 5100 with 18" 3/8

 

[Edge & Engine]

Wow................................................




Whats your price on a 5100 with 18" 3/8

$409

 

[04ultra]

Im going to treat my Dolmar dealer to lunch in a few weeks..........I must be spoiled...............





.

 

[sugarbush]

Sugarbush - I haven't actually looked online at the dealer locator...but I assume your the closest Dolmar dealer to DL? I don't think I'm too far from you and I may have to stop by some time to check out your shop.

I was your neighbor for years, had a shop for years on Big Sugarbush lake. I sold jonsereds, echo and oleo-mac. there are a few dealers in between DL and Brainerd. was over to the lake yesterday, I like the area and do miss many of the customers. some still drive to my shop here or when I'm over there pick up saws to repair. If your in the Brainerd area, do stop in.