We arent trying to be secretive, we are trying to protect the shops that support us. Its not that we hate or despise the internet, in fact I shop on the net for dvds, games etc. Basically when we started this company we knew it was going to be an uphill battle, how do we fight it? You have to make friends that will support you, you have to educate the consumer and you have to retain them. The easist way for us to do this was to allign ourselves with pro shops that supported us before. Saying that these shops took a chance on buying our products, and since they did that we felt it only fair to support them by not selling online and undercutting their potential profit makers. Its that easy. The internet is a great way to sell in numbers, its a great way to touch more people faster. However we want to build long term relationships with the people we feel will support us through thick and thin, that buy our product because its great not because its a cheap buy. I read a lot of posts on here about "my pro shop guy rips me off, and he is the only guy in town, or he wont carry their products because they dont sell to distributors", yeah thats horrible and no way to run a business, so align yourself with another pro shop. Be a smart consumer and dont put limitations on your buying power and your dollar. Yes Buddies will order the ball, drill, and ship it to you, and yes they are an internet retailer so why do we allow them to sell it? Because they are a pro shop above all and they are going to make a profit, and that sale did not undercut the shop down the street. If we want this business to survive we need to fix the problem, people are not making points. Thats whats wrong, this industry is trying to make sales numbers but going in debt to do it. Yes they can sell 10,000 balls but if you are only box in box out and your not covering overhead your going to go under eventually. We as an industry need to see the big picture. Yes not everyone will agree with our business stance, we understand, our feelings are not hurt, our business stance does not effect our ball performance. We as most of you know do produce AMF products which you can find on websites at prices that are catchy to the end consumer. So what the heck are we doing you ask. Its not that we are trying to be saviors of the industry, (we certainly are not that big at this point, and the whole butterfly flapping wings causing a tidal wave in China doesnt fly with us yet) we are just trying to provide shops a quality product and brand name that they can use to their advantage for once (900 Global). I hope this makes sense. We can discuss this further, feel free to ask questions, just keep it civil around here (not that this thread isnt).
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900 Global/AMF Sales Manager