Fat Spanish Waiter:I agree , and the best way to ensure this doesn`t happen ? - Don`t bring any stock in !
Another groundless insinuation.
Let's get a few things clear:
Most distributors of Japanese products - and here we're talking subsidiaries as well as independent distributors - have to submit a sales plan to the manufacturing company, showing how many of a product they want to order.
In the case of most products in the hi-fi/home cinema mass-market, this will have happened some time last summer, if not earlier.
Once that order is made, the manufacturer slots this into its production schedule, and the products are made.
Most manufacturers don't have dedicated lines making a single product non-stop: a production line will run for a set time making a particular product, and when the requisite number of products have been made, it will be switched to building something else.
If there is unprecedented demand for a product, it's not just a matter of hitting the go button and they start pouring off the line, into boxes and onto the boat: manufacturers will have to order in components - everything from the smallest electrical components to the likes of casework mouldings and pressings - from outside suppliers. They must then juggle production schedules to slot in manufacture of the required products between whatever the production lines are actually supposed to be making at the moment.
As has been mentioned several times, there was a change of company and management in Yamaha's UK organisation last summer, bringing Yamaha Music and the audio/home cinema products under one roof.
The product planning for the current models had been done before the change, and so the new operation inherited the orders and pricing structure set by the old. It then decided to revise prices on some products to make them more competitive in order to sell the quantities it had on the order books.
However, demand for the new products took off in a way not imagined by the original product planning people, hence the shortages.
The 'halo effect' of the Awards won by some models has also re-awakened interest in other models in the range, which have also seen increases in demand.
The factories aren't just making products for the UK: they're making them for the whole world. And given that the 763 and 863SE models are UK-only models, it's not just a case of shifting stock intended for somewhere else in Europe.
Think that's about it...
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram