Quote:
Originally Posted by tyler1980
AP does want to shut down the grey market as far as i can tell. Having a 20 minute conversation exclusively about grey market with two AP people in high level positions gave me the impression they really hate it, a lot.
Hating it and actually being able to stop it are different and i concede that point. I never said they could pull it off but if that is the thinking on behalf of AP then its on their radar in a big way.
I lost count but there are a lot of AD's that lost status this year already so the consolidation to fewer AD's and moving to more brand owned sales channels is already underway.
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Very simple -- if AP wants to shut down grey market, sell on 'consignment" to ADs. Meaning, let the AD pay AP for the watch once they have sold it for full price. If they cannot sell it within 6 months AP takes it back. Now stores will still have other bills to pay, but not having all of your capital tied up in slow moving inventory would significantly reduce the incentive to resort to the grey market. Will AP ever do this? Of course not as they now take all the risk on sales, they have a lot more of their capital tied up with inventory, etc. Again, they could pretty much shut down the grey market, but not without costing themselves money in the process.