Memphis Audio confirmed a selection of its products has been available on Best Buy Online for the past 6-8 weeks. The company, however, has no plans to enter the chain’s brick and mortar stores, it said.
Memphis is selling to Bestbuy.com as a means of boosting Memphis’ online marketing, it said. It placed its products on Crutchfield.com in March for the same reason, said Memphis Marketing Manager Blake Franchini.
“Best Buy Online is really part of a marketing concept. We’re not in, and we don’t have any plan to try to be in Best Buy stores. It is just a way to get brand exposure on the Internet.” When consumers Google car audio, now they may see Memphis in their searches. “It’s more of an advertising push online. Best Buy does a lot of search engine optimization and we’re not able to get that kind of exposure without being on an online platform like Best Buy or Crutchfield,” Franchini said.
Memphis is holding Bestbuy.com to minimum advertised price (MAP) standards, he said.
You can see Memphis products on Bestbuy.com here.
A question If I may: How about a line that sells online at MSRP, not MAP? Having in mind that it is a profitable line of course. Would you mind if that is the case?
Guess it doesn’t matter that it’s not sold in the store when you can have it shipped to the store. What a deal for Best Buy. Most of Memphis’ higher end product and they don’t have to stock a thing.
Likewise what Cory said. We even had a couple items over MSRP. We never needed any advertising on line or otherwise because we built the brand in our town over the last 20 years to the point that people ask for it by name.
I maintain that except in rare cases, in a specialty store people will buy what you recommend. Now once that’s done and they go to research, the price is MAP.
I always admired Memphis for staying true to the dealers that built the brand and to what they printed on the price sheet, “no internet sales”. Obviously makes one wonder what’s next.
I agree completely. I’ve sold Memphis for 15+ years now. I’ve built this name up in my small town and people ask for it. I loved that I could set the price that I wanted to sell it for. Those days are obviously over.
Well so much for protecting the memphis dealer. Now anyone that has a computer can just go online and buy and well who cares if the dealers have over head. So all brick and mortar shop that supported the line will have to compete with on line sales. Good job memphis
It is unfortunate that Memphis felt the need to do this, and that is the point. It is a business decision that I am sure was not made easily. It is sad that profit center quality lines that are more mainstream priced (rather than high end) are difficult for brick and mortar retailers to find. Memphis was my go-to line for many years when I had my store. If more dealers had gotten on board, perhaps we wouldn’t be here. I wish my friends at Memphis well.
Yup, ‘End of the line’ for that traditional revenue opportunity. Same deal for all EM Dealers… No ‘bonus’ GP for you anymore. Time to find a new, legitimate Vendor ‘partner’ — that is not exclusively focused on just ‘moving boxes’…
What about us guys that could actually sell Memphis above MAP because they weren’t all over online. Guess that’s going to end now. I liked having a line that I could be profitable with. Why even have MSRP if everyone is just going to sell at MAP?