Quote from: TheSwede75 on May 03, 2013, 12:50:40 AM

Quote from: davos on May 02, 2013, 10:20:41 PM

Quote from: btceic on May 02, 2013, 10:16:28 PM

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I'd rather see him auction large lots of the usb miners - effectively wholesaling them to distributors. It would be beneficial in creating larger economies, keep the wholesale price competitive, and would enable people to retail them through whatever mechanism they felt best served retail buyers.

Edit: I'm thinking of large lots at the 100's of units level. 128 would be good as it would parallel 4 of the block erupter blades for chipcount while still enabling some level of wholesale volume.

That is the dumbest idea so far. Why would you want to start a 'price gauging' war between re-sellers when it's proven right here they don't need re-sellers. Only thing that would happen is that ASICMINER's margin would be lower and sale prices would be higher.

Professional retail distribution would require BitFountain/AM to hire additional staff dedicated to managing a large rotating inventory, customer service, etc. It might require them (as was originally suggested) to start processing non-BTC payments from around the world - complicating their accounting.

Obviously you sacrifice some level of margin by selling equipment to retailers as an OEM, but you also save yourself a lot of headaches. Adding a full-scale retail operation adds an entire level of business complexity for relatively low marginal gains. The original wholesale price, if set by auction, would cut significantly into retail margins while eliminating a great deal of operational complexity for AM. The price AM gets would be less, obviously, than the final cost to retail buyers... but it couldn't be that much less as efficient dedicated retail operations would make it work. When I think of a retailer I'm not thinking of some guy on this site buying 128 units and selling them for a 100% markup also on this site - price competitiveness would emerge when BitcoinStore and other retailers made bids on 10s or 100s of lots and then sold them through their more efficient system.

AM would get a very good price, and consumers would get better access and service.