HARD DISCOUNTS FOR JOHANNUS!! What's up??

[Guest]

my friends! Take your browser to the US Johannus site as fast as you can! Take a deep breath!
Looks like Johannus is seriously dropping prices on their organs, half price on a number of "Special Edition" models. You can now purchase an Opus 37 for the same price you paid it for a Opus 17 last fall. Does anyone know what the "special edition" part entails? Are they somewhat stripped down, or what? I wish I had the room!!</p>

Ok, but on the other hand... people working in a store says dealers had no idea this was going to happen... a somewhat odd marketing idea unless they are in a bad financial situation, or planning to ultimately go out of business in the U.S... I would ultimately go fo the latter... Looks like they're emptying stores and leaving US market... I'll try to place a call to a couple of friends of mine.</p>

Any ideas/rumors out there?</p>

MB </p><o:p></o:p>

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[nullogik]

Re: HARD DISCOUNTS FOR JOHANNUS!! What's up??



Wow the discounts are huge! 50% off! How peculiar.</p>

I rather fancy a Rembrandt 497 for $25k which seems like a real bargain. A smart looking console and with speaker compliment too.</p>

Hmm, I wonder are they pulling out of the US market? Either that or they are clearing out their "old end of line stock" to make way for new models.</p>

Still at those sorts of prices you can't go wrong.
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[Guest]

Re: HARD DISCOUNTS FOR JOHANNUS!! What's up??

[quote user="nullogik"]

Hmm, I wonder are they pulling out of the US market? Either that or they are clearing out their "old end of line stock" to make way for new models.
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Still at those sorts of prices you can't go wrong.
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Well, new models to come would be my first guess in normal times... but in these times doesn't seem so realistic, and you wouldn't do it that way... The people I've talked to woke up this morning with that discounts page showing out so abruptly...  Hmmm</p>

[Guest]

Re: HARD DISCOUNTS FOR JOHANNUS!! What's up??

[quote user="merrybench"]

my friends! Take your browser to the US Johannus site as fast as you can! Take a deep breath!
Looks like Johannus is seriously dropping prices on their organs, half price on a number of "Special Edition" models. You can now purchase an Opus 37 for the same price you paid it for a Opus 17 last fall. Does anyone know what the "special edition" part entails? Are they somewhat stripped down, or what? I wish I had the room!!</p>

Ok, but on the other hand... people working in a store says dealers had no idea this was going to happen... a somewhat odd marketing idea unless they are in a bad financial situation, or planning to ultimately go out of business in the U.S... I would ultimately go fo the latter... Looks like they're emptying stores and leaving US market... I'll try to place a call to a couple of friends of mine.</p>

Any ideas/rumors out there?</p>

MB </p><o:p></o:p>

 </p>

[/quote]</p>

Maybe they have noticed Hauptwerk taking away market share from them.  Tbh, Hauptwerk has the better C-C samples.......I don't know if Johannus has really sampled/recorded any C-C pipe ranks.</p>

[arie v]

Re: HARD DISCOUNTS FOR JOHANNUS!! What's up??



Merrybench,</p>

I don't know exactly what Johannus is trying to do, but I can tell you that Allen and Rodgers execs. plus anybody else in North America who competes with them woke up to a nightmare. A friend of mine told me that the Rodgers dealers got an e-mail from Rodgers headquareters early yesterday about this Johannus 50% off deal.</p>

Johannus, can't really pull out of the US, as they are really not there. All sales, support, and parts come from Holland. There is no US distributor per se. They do have a dealer network though, but dealers deal with the mother corp. I do believe they may warehouse some inventory in Kentucky or in the Chicago area but that is about it.</p>

In any case, Rodgers and Allen, both of whom are probably suffering from declining sales, can't be happy about this. Three and four manual organs are their gravy models. I can't see how either make money on the low end models.</p>

It will be interesting to see what North American companies will do in response to this.</p>

I view this as Johannus willing to inflict pain on Rodgers and Allen, so they (Johannus) would gain marketshare in this long term. That is if the Johannus ownership has deep enough pockets to hurt their own bottomline temporarily.</p>

Indeed, we are living in unusual times.
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AV
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[Guest]

Re: HARD DISCOUNTS FOR JOHANNUS!! What's up??

Arie, interesting point, but this means that they didn't and they won't rely on dealers at all, right? I say "won't" cause after this, dealers, who has been bypassed, won't go on dealing with johannus, and that's quite dangerous, for a Europebased company, it means they're losing any support there. And I don't think e-commerce is the right way to sell organs...

[Guest]

Re: HARD DISCOUNTS FOR JOHANNUS!! What's up??



Seems to me that if you are trying to gain a foothold in this market, this is the type of thing you would do. If you read the page notice that they include the 10year warranty and state that delivery and installation are extra (this is where the dealers can make some money). You can't actually buy it online, rather they take your contact info. My guess is they forward it to the local dealer to complete the sale. Johannus probably pays a commission to the local dealer from the purchase price and the dealer pockets any money made from the delivery and installation fee they charge.</p>

In this economy a new organ is a luxury, so this generates some revenue. The standard Johannus console (which is the most expensive part of the organ) is not nearly the build quality of an Allen or upper range Rodgers. These are probably standardized specifications and any options (moving stops) would raise the price substantially.</p>

Under normal economic situations the prices on the website are typical of the price to the dealer (possibly a little bit lower) they just eliminated the dealer margin.</p>

Jeff
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[Clarion]

Re: HARD DISCOUNTS FOR JOHANNUS!! What's up??



[quote user="nardofor"]And I don't think e-commerce is the right way to sell organs...[/quote]</P>


Right or wrong is hardly the issue! Any organ vendor who is so backward, that they unable to do business the way business is done these days,will be breathing their last in the Valley of the Dinosaurs!!</P>


Ability to deal withcustomers via the internet was a majorfactor inmy recent selection of a new organ. Upon enquiring about a new organ; one manufacturer/dealerrefused to provideany informationregardingwhat they had to offer via internet.The company I finally ended up dealing with; whose sales strategy goes far beyond mere myopic local focus;utilizes the internetenabling them to market their products across the entireNorth American continent. I was able to conduct 99% of my business with themby internet.</P>

[Guest]

Re: HARD DISCOUNTS FOR JOHANNUS!! What's up??



Um Clarion, not to rain on your parade, but as far I know they don't sell directly on the internet (in the US anyway) they sell through local reps,the local one here in Iowa is in Wisconsin. </p>

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Jeff
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[BOZ]

Re: HARD DISCOUNTS FOR JOHANNUS!! What's up??

Johannus has a very good website: useful information, excellent background on the company, good soundbytes, informative videos. Some of the "leaders" in the organ manufacturing realm could take a lesson from Johannus. I could never understand why the "leaders" have such paltry sites with very, very few good images of the instruments and even fewer videos. Maybe they assume (perhaps correctly) that the instrument sells itself. But in these hard times, I should think they would pull all the stops. Maybe it will happen?

[circa1949]

Re: HARD DISCOUNTS FOR JOHANNUS!! What's up??



Interesting - a couple observations: </p>

1) I've noticed all sorts of retailers discounting all sorts of stuff recently. They are obviously afraid economic conditions will get even worse and they will be stuck with unsold inventory. At the end fo the day it's at least better to get rid of what you have at cost, then to be stuck with something you can't sell even for what you paid for it. As I admitted this was my cynical rationale for considering selling my own organ, even though I haven't created its replacement yet. I wasn't "discounting" but rather rushing to market...I will be losing money no matter what on it but that's ok because I'm happy with what I've gotten out of it.
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2) This is just the start...seriously, I hope at this point that at least a couple digital organ manufacturers can survive...whoever they are. There's going to be "blood on the street" as they say on Wall St. I make no secret of being somewhat partial to Allen. I hope they make it...but I hope Rodgers makes it too. Allen should still have a good amt. of the 90 million in cash they got from selling their access concentrator/networking business. Rodgers is of course owned by Roland, which surely has to be the largest "synth" and pro keyboard maker in the world. Japanese companies, like Japanese citizens, are notoriously financially cautious so it's hard to imagine that company not being able to ride out a devastating recession. Having competition in the electronic classical organ segment is a good thing for us consumers, OTOH it seems likely at least some of the players will fold. (of course there is the ongoing controvery about the status of A.G.)</p>

3) it's sad to see the sort of pettiness going on...for example wikipedia entries are obviously being edited by agents or persons acting on behalf of either company. (or perhaps just by fanboys.) For example an entry on electronic organs implied that Rodgers routinely supported organs 30 years and old when everyone knows that's not true...in fact techs here have stated that they can't even supply parts for the first generation of the MIKASCO (or whatever) digital keying system from the mid 80s.
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