 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group The President's Screen Ian Robinson |
The overwhelming success of our recent NetComm modem offer brings home several interesting points. Although originally challenged to come up with 50 definite orders, the tally at last count was 130 orders - and rising.
The first point to notice is the influential buying power the Group has, when we co-ordinate a bulk purchase such as the modem offer. The prices we were able to attain were many hundreds of dollars below recommended retail price (whatever that really means nowadays), and members would be hard pressed to find such devices at a lower cost anywhere. Powerful intelligent modems have now dropped to a price point that is relatively affordable to the average business user, and the number of dial-up services (such as our own impressive bulletin board) have increased dramatically over the last few months. For these reasons, modems appear to be the flavour of the month with Melb PC members, and hence the success of our bulk purchase.
What we on the organising committee now need to determine is which other offerings (hardware, software or services) would also prove popular, if future bulk purchase arrangements were organised. Perhaps it could be hard disks? The 20 MB or 30 MB units would cost around the same as a smart modem, and there is no shortage of suppliers willing to do a deal with the Group. How about printers? Continuous stationery? High-resolution screens? Ergonomic furniture? Software?
We welcome your feedback on future bulk buys, so please write in to the magazine, leave a message on the BBS, or collar a committee member at the next meeting to express your views.
Of course, there are difficulties involved in organising such purchases. In the case of the modem deal, for example, the order was so unexpectedly large that NetComm is battling to supply them all ex stock, and some members may find themselves waiting for a few weeks while new modems are manufactured. The amount of promotional effort for such deals is time-consuming and tricky, since they are usually offered only for a specific time period.
Perhaps one of the touchiest points with the whole business is that any such deal represents (whether we like it or not) an implied endorsement of the products by the Group. While this has been decided as acceptable for proven Australian-made products such as NetComm modems, we would be hesitant to proceed with such bulk buys (no matter how lucrative the price) if the goods are deemed to be in any way inferior, or a potential source of problems for our members. So please take this into account when making your suggestions.
Another aspect of the NetComm bulk purchase which caught us by surprise was the profitability of the exercise. The Group applied a minimal loading of around $20 on each modem to cover expenses of promotion in the magazine, Bankcard commission, mailing costs and so on, just to ensure that we did not lose money on the deal. As it turned out, with the volume of orders placed, we actually made several thousand dollars! This windfall backs up my previous argument (in the July issue of PC Update) that the Group should be searching for other beneficial ways such as this bulk buy, the PC 88 stand and the Monster Auction, to supplement our revenue, rather than to raise membership fees.
We have made significant capital investments over the past twelve months, such as the new 80386 systems for the production of PC Update and the bulletin board, and it is up to us to find ways to make these investments generate further revenue, so that membership costs are kept to a mini-mum. We are not a restricted or secret society - new members are our bread and butter, and assisting as many other people as possible in utilising their PC resources is our role. Therefore our annual fees should not be in any way prohibitive. Most new members express surprise at our low membership fees when told of the services the Group provides, and I would like to keep it that way. Once again, if you have any other bright ideas about alternative ways the Group can raise revenue (swap meets, exhibitions, wine bottlings, lamington drives?), please pass it on to myself or the other committee members.
Moving on to other matters, I have been impressed by the steadily growing attendance at both the main monthly meeting and at the special interest groups (or SIGs, for those of you who insist on acronyms). Fortunately, we have booked both Auditoriums 1 and 2 in Clunies-Ross House for all our 1989 monthly meetings, which will hopefully cater for the swelling crowds. Already, I can predict that our next Monster Auction will be a real problem to accommodate -perhaps we could consider another venue - does anybody know someone who owns a renovated movie theatre?
It has been good to see that volunteers have quickly pick-ed up the daunting task of running our New Users SIGs (East and West), since Tom Coleman has to take off to Dar-win. Any help that other members can provide to these fledgling SIGs would be much appreciated - they both require the 'experts' among us to address their meetings on the old favourites (DOS, hard disks, backups, and so on). Tom is quite seriously planning to establish a Melb PC Northern Territory SIG - so stay tuned! Please contact one of the SIG co-ordinators if you would like to volunteer your ser-vices to help out the novice users among us. Remember, we were all in that position once (I still can never find that damned 'Any' key!).
Next month's main meeting is all about Speeding Up Your PC - a subject which confronts all of us at some time or other - so once again I am expecting a full house. See you there.
Reprinted from the September 1988 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
