BMAC revisited
While rewriting the new MTEQC web site, I came across the old “Welcome to BMAC client!” on the home page, and got to thinking about the whole BMAC closure.
To say that I was surprised would be a lie; while some had good experience with them, I have received a folder full of horror stories about their support department. I once exchanged a few email with a support manager at the Parée Street store, and the problem was not essentially with staff quality – the problem was with enough qualified staffers, and keeping them. I was told they had a great amount of “churn” compared to an industry where a qualified tech will usually stay with the same company for years.
So in the end it was either not meet demand, or lower standards. They went for the quick bucks and paid the price.
Nor was I sad at the news – others soon stepped in and filled the hole in the market: Camelot Info at Place Ville Marie now sells hardware, even CompuSmart now retails Apple products (although even with great improvement, the staff (save one or two) is rather clueless about Mac!), and Mac Clinic, I was told, rehired some of the best technicians from BMAC even before the news of their death had been made public.
It also meant more business for us, which is always a good thing.
But – What really struck me was a bit concerning that news published on MacNN , itself quoting from The Gazette, and that said:
“A Mac retailer in Montreal, CA may soon be forced out of business due to a declining user base and “plunging popularity” of Macs, according to an article in Montreal’s The Gazette.
“B.Mac Le Magasin Inc. has closed three of its four stores in the Montreal area and laid off 37 of 52 employees. The fourth store may be forced to close next month—or face the prospect of bankruptcy, according to one reader.
“The newspaper blames poor worldwide Mac sales and a low percentage of the overall PC market but doesn’t provide information about Montreal’s market where there is an apparently thriving design community that mainly uses Macintosh systems.”
Well – I can deal with “low percentage of the overall PC market” – which was true – but I find GREAT irony in reading about “declining user base” and “plunging popularity” of Macs”...
Seeing a large Tiger display and Mac products on the shelves at Compusmart (ex-Crazy Irving), where David Tucci is in charge of buying among other things. points to anything but declining markets.
I have know David for many years, and he is a really nice guy, and he is also a very shrewd businessman. But a Mac fan he is not. Perhaps if the G5 tower came with a “Butthole Surfers” case design, à-la-U2-iPod, he would consider it. Until then, if you see Apple products at CompuSmart, you can be absolutely sure it’s because there is money in the Mac business.
I do not mean to slam into Compusmart here, don’t get me wrong: I shop there. Their culture is a PC culture, generic mass-sales like. For them, a Mac is just another box to sell. There is nothing inherently wrong in that, it takes all kinds.
I would buy there instead of Future Shop, for instance, because however inadequate CompuSmart’s service may be from a Mac user’s point-of-view, they at least TRY to have some…
But going back to our topic, BMAC: they were quick in placing the blame on the market. Yet perhaps paying Downtown rent prices for a store with a hidden door nooked at the main gates of a church, a store lost in a maze that had no traffic because even people that knew where it was had trouble finding it, and THEN having to fill half the shelves, in that store and all others, with art supplies following the Dessie buyout agreement… Well, perhaps all that had something to do with it.
It certainly was not margin on Mac products – they were priviledged to pay LESS than any other reseller in town (with the posssiblke exception of Future Shop back when Apple mistakenly believed the would not bait-and-switch to PC box and granted them full reseller status), yet nobody but BMAC profited from that discount…