As a Best Buy employee and longtime user of minidisc (five years this
Sunday!), I would be very disappointed if my company were to drop minidisc,
but I don't think that will be happening. Best Buy sales employees (I'm a
merchandiser, by the way) are notorious for spreading inaccurate
information. One PCHO employee once told me that AMD went bankrupt and that
they were exiting processor sales, but I knew better. That's not to say
that a dropping of MD couldn't happen, though. Best Buy has indeed made
some stupid marketing decisions (office products anyone? I knew that
dumb-ass move would fail).
<< They are one of the worst places for making good marketing decisions.
Hell look at when they stopped carrying Macintosh. All that happened there,
was that CompUSA started
doing more sales. >> ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
In all fairness to Best Buy, my corporate offices felt that they had no
choice but to drop the iMac due to Apple's stupid insistence that we carry
pre-determined ratios of all the different colours. We did not want to be
burdened by an overwhelming number of colours that did not sell. We had
tried to develop a distribution strategy that would have minimised that, but
that attempt was obviously not successful. Anyway, iMac lovers were better
served by going to CompUSA, anyway. At the time of our iMac launch, our Mac
software was nearly non-existent (and today, it *is* non-existent), and the
only complementary accessories/peripherals that we carried for the iMac were
USB SuperDisk and Zip drives and stupid Bondi-Blue surge protectors by
Belkin that we still have in great quantities. (iMac lovers: Please take
them off our hands!!)
Back to the topic on hand: although I don't think Best Buy will be dropping
minidisc anytime in the near future, they are indeed marginalising minidisc.
What used to be our 'Minidisc' aisle is now 'Digital Audio', and the signage
reflects that. I looked at that section the other day, and I noticed that
the shelf systems had disappeared, but they might have been moved in-line
with the other shelf systems. CD-R recording decks were moved to their
place, and RCA MP3 portable players are now merchandised along with the
minidisc portables. Minidisc is still so obviously the best choice among
the three formats, however, that I am confident that customers will see
that. (Audio CD-R sales have now surpassed minidisc, though, according to
TWICE magazine, but CD recording decks are considerably more expensive than
MD.) Now, if our sales staff fails to communicate that CD-RW discs will
*not* play in most CD portables and decks, then MD sales might be hurt....
In any case, I don't think we should worry about Best Buy dropping MD
anytime soon. Best Buy has faithfully carried MD since its release in 1992,
so I could not imagine that they would drop them now. That Warner is
getting back into the MD business proves that this format is by no means on
its last legs. It still has plenty of life left in it. Incidentally, Best
Buy has just recently started carrying that really cool Sony CD-MD 4x
recording deck that compares very favourably with those overpriced CD
recording decks. I know of many salespeople in my own store who personally
own MD, and at least one of them is in the Home Audio department. MD is
*their* recording format of choice, and you know darn well that they're
going to communicate that to their customers. Sony's MD accommodation
programme for retail employees has succeeded in converting many of them to
MD buffs, and this has helped in assuring MD's success.
Daryl,
who's still very grateful for Best Buy for making MD affordable to me
(although I did pay a whopping $600 for my very first recording deck)
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