Changing Business Models for Wholesale Marine Electronics

Understanding the world of wholesale marine electronics can be a complicated pursuit. Where one company might look at buying wholesale as buying direct from the manufacturer, another might look at it as buying from a distributor, and a third might look at wholesale as buying from distributors, manufacturers and importers.

The end result, as anyone who has scoured the Internet for the best prices knows, is a wide range of prices on any particular product. For the consumer, this means that if you look around long enough you may be able to find a great deal.

For many though, looking endlessly on the Internet for the lowest price isn’t their idea of a boating trip. Many in fact shy away from online purchasing all together. And that’s often because they don’t want to purchase something sight unseen. Others though, will often make a great effort to learn about a product and even try it out at the local marine electronics store, before, to the disdain of the retailer, buying it much cheaper online.

The truth of the matter is that online wholesale marine electronics outfits have a tremendous advantage over marine electronics retail stores. That’s because your store down at the dock not only has to add the mark-up from a distributor but also factor in brick and mortar costs, like rent.

Although marine retail outlets will always have their appeal, especially to those that like the brick-and-mortar shopping experience, it doesn’t mean online wholesale marine electronics outlets will stop striving to close in on retail outlet strongholds. And those strongholds are many. Customer service, knowledgeable sales staff, and of course, something fun to do are but a few.

This means that if online wholesale marine electronics companies are to capture more retail market share, they will have to address these issues. And they are expected to, once the video technology becomes available.

With the next generation of microprocessors and PCs, video is expected to come into its own. And with it, wholesale marine electronics outfits, which are often run by independent marine electronics retail stores, will provide the ability for you to see, talk to and get to know the sales wizards behind the online marine electronics curtain.

Another trend in the marine electronics market is for marine electronics manufactures to not only establish their own distribution channels, but also outright purchase existing marine electronics distribution companies to gain regional market shares. In fact, many marine electronics companies have done just that, buying up distributors not to eliminate distributor mark-up, but to boost their own profit margins.

As more marine electronics manufacturers adopt this business strategy, the end-result will be lower prices. That’s because eliminating the distributor’s cut from the retail price will allow them to gain market share.

Although the marine electronics manufacturers would like to sell direct to the consumer in their own retail outlet, odds are they will never be able to with their present business models. Unlike cell phone companies that have their own stores, the economics of scale will prevent marine electronics manufacturers from having their own stores.

That is unless, perhaps, they move into cell phone territory by incorporating cell phone technology into GPS units. Which of course is exactly what Garmin has done. Its GPS phone, the nuvifone, is available exclusively through AT&T, which, case in point, has a well-established national network of stores.