Should Sonor sell the SQ2 customer direct?

[Frank Godiva]

Fender and Gibson have been doing this for years. Back in the Designer days, you needed a dealer to make the order. Today an end user can make the order on the configurator themselves and just take that to a dealer.

So should Sonor offer factory direct or is this a bad idea?

[Jules]

Interesting proposition.

My take ok that… Sonor isn’t a household name like Fender and Gibson so the dealers may already have a challenge selling the product. Not to mention lots of the Sonor products seem to have gaping holes in availability. I say that as someone who couldn’t find a Vintage Silver Glitter 18”
floor tom or enough basic arm components to build up stands Iike I want them.

The comparison of the strength of the band compared to Gibson and Fender are that dealers are going to experience strong sales all up and down the price points regardless.

I don’t think Sonor can afford to piss off the dealer network in the US and I think that bypassing that network for direct SQ2 sales would be a problem.

KHS as a distributor only has so much of a budget and so much warehouse space. They are too cheap to order shirts, they surely won’t preorder SQ2 stuff for their warehouse. So, if dealers aren’t confident they can sell preconfigured, preordered and Paid for (dealers invoices are due within a set time and not when the item sells) then many customers aren’t going to buy SQ2s because of the year wait.

Just my take. I hope to hear other views.