talkmagic.co.uk

I just had a email from magictricks.co.uk, regarding the selling (or not) of Jay's products.

The basic just of the email, was that Jay has a contract with the 'shops' that sell his products, where he tells them minimum order no, selling price, when and how much for special offers etc.

Magictricks.co.uk have now decided to stop stocking his products, due to the fact that this years contract was even more restrictive.

I just feel that this is quite sad really - and paints Jay as a bit of a control freak.

I also feel a bit cheated, as to the fact that I got to pay what Jay wants me to pay - whatever happened to free market?

Anyone else got comments on this?

Yeah, I've just been reading the email too. I interviewed Carl Fraser last December and he's a good bloke (on a par with Seige really) so I strongly disvelieve it's a Penguin v Sankey thing. It seems that Sankey wants total control over the retail chain, including what and when to promote certain products. Sankey's products are good, but clearly, he's only one supplier in a sea of others.

Oh well, to the sales!

He is the one and only creator of his work, which means he owns every aspect (both legally possession and spiritual possession) of his work, therefore he have all rights to control the selling and marketing of his work.
Think about it this way, let's say you invented some amazing machine, you don't have any special funding or any thing, it all comes out of your own pocket, including raw building price, and now you need to sell the product.
I believe like any other you would also want to control the marketing of the product, which consist on market price, and amounts supplied and sold.
By controlling the market price and product stock at retailers he is actualy able to control the market of his products, that way all the prices at retailers are the same, which means less market competition, which means a sturdy market for him to keep selling his material to.

The reason his contract became more restrictive, I believe, is because the resent trouble he had with penguin magic.

iummydd wrote:The reason his contract became more restrictive, I believe, is because the resent trouble he had with penguin magic.

I think it would be best to go to the horse's mouth rather than descend into conjecture:

"The agreement we had with Jay was EXTREMELY constricting -
he told us what products we had to take, how many of them,
and when, regardless of the quality of them. He told us
when we had to run special offers, and when we couldn't run
them - he even tried to tell us how much we had to charge
for his products, and at one stage wanted us to agree not
to feature any negative reviews of his products!

Over the past year, we've found ourself constantly promoting
Jay's products above other items we stock, purely to keep up
with the volume of new items coming through from him. This
is great for Jay - he knows that whatever he releases, he's
already sold. However, in the interests of consumer choice, and
the fact that our product range should be decided by us, based
on what our customers want, I decided this wasn't the best way
forward. We're also not the only previous Sankey dealer to not
sign the new agreement.

...

This years agreement was even more restricting and the minimum
order quantities were higher than before. I have serious concerns
that the new agreement would have breached UK price fixing
legislation, which was another key factor in our decision not to
renew."

You cant go fixing prices for products in the UK (and I think most of EU countries), as its against the law.

I know Jay is just trying to protect his intelluctual rights and products, but it does seem a bit OTT.

it's a shame, great magician...but very unfair on the retailers, especially the whole "promoting the stock" part of Carl's e-mail...

good on him for standing up for what he believes in; totally agree with Mr. Fraser...

aaah magictricks.co.uk - my first ever magic purchases were from him, so i've just ordered 45 out of interest, and some Maven stuff....

Yeah this thing has made me value Sankey less. May well buy a deck of cards from Penguin just to spite him

I dont value him less as a maigcian, just feel cheated by his business philosophy

Especially when one considers the fuss made about a dealers selling philosophy. It seems perhaps the forementioned dealer was trying to combat what magictricks are talking about?

Resale Price Maintenance has been illegal in the UK for many years and EU law takes this aspect even further. Jay needs to be very careful about this sort of thing, maintaining and promoting your own range is fine but there are limits beyond which it all backfires. Eventually he will be left with a severely depleted distribution network and sales will be very poor indeed.

Mandrake wrote:Resale Price Maintenance has been illegal in the UK for many years and EU law takes this aspect even further. Jay needs to be very careful about this sort of thing, maintaining and promoting your own range is fine but there are limits beyond which it all backfires. Eventually he will be left with a severely depleted distribution network and sales will be very poor indeed.

I suspect he may have begun to find that limit with the new contract. I haven't looked for others dumping stock, but does this mean there may be space for new voices, I wonder?

P.S: Welcome back, Mandrake. Did you have a nice time?

Tomo wrote:Welcome back, Mandrake. Did you have a nice time?

Yup thank you - until the point where the car radiator burst, the piston rings on the engine gave in and I unintentionally covered half of Lake Windermere in clouds of oily smoke! When it cleared there was a Policeman standing there like the Genie of the Lamp politely enquiring if I, or the vehicle, was on fire. Let's see Mr.Sankey top that one !

woohoo im gonna buy all those tricks going cheap

also, theres an error on magictricks.co.uk

they dont sell magus capsule but if you google magus capsule it will come up on on magictricks.co.uk, like its hidden on the website

lol

It's probably Google's cache that's out of date.

It says it's out of stock so they may have taken it off their main website but it's still Googleable.