Re:Niche marketing alfa-digest V7 #936

["C.M. Smith" <cmsmith@domain.elided>]

The mathematics of business defeats the niche marketer who also looks for
big sales volumes. Trouble is the entire dealer and factory support system
costs x dollars, even at a minimum size. Those x dollars have to be earned
on y sales of cars. To earn a big enough profit margin on EACH car sold is
the problem. Below a certain level of sales the cost per car sold of the
infrastructure required to support the sales and service for those cars
becomes impossible to justify. Remember that when you question the high
cost of Ricambi Originale or even aftermarket bits. Sure the gross margin
may be high but the net after overheads etc is still..well I suspect many
supporters of Alfa owners in NA are not wealthy people, not from their
business anyway, they pretty well love the cars as much as we enthusiastic
owners do.

Anyway, that's why the niche marketer "falls" into the trap of higher end
units looking for more margin per car which then punishes sales driving the
manufacturer to ever higher "content" to get the margins up as volumes
fall. Takes real guts to keep accepting punishing losses while going for
market share that will allow you to be profitable. Can't remember the last
specialist manufacturer that succeeded.

 Ferrari doesn't care because their margins reflect their actual
marketplace position as pure niche marketing, as for Rollers and to some
extent Porsches and Lotus's's's. Funny thing is even the majors get caught
up in the high margin specialist illusion. I mean who really wants a super
high end Ford? You can now buy an Aston, which is really a warmed over
Jaguar which soon will be a warmed over Ford. And so it goes... Keep those
Alfa's going, the system is grinding us down, and hug your specialist
supplier (or at least buy from him now and again, we'll all regret it in
the long run if we insist on Ford prices for Alfa parts) 
Michael Smith
Calgary, Alberta
Canada
91 Alfa 164L, White, original owner 

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