So why exactly are there resellers?

You have Clevo, who is the ODM.

Then you have companies, such as Sager and Eurocom, who are OEM's. They get the barebones from Clevo and assemble the system.

THEN you have resellers.

I understand that resellers offer more support options AND they have a cheaper pricing, but my question is, why? Why does there need to be a third party involved?

Wouldn't it be easier if PowerNotebooks, Xotic or others just became an OEM? They already offer more support and better pricing.

I am not complaining, I am just trying to understand the logic.

 

Welcome to Mcdonald may I take youre command please?

 

the resellers (powernotebooks, xotic, etc . . .) don't have the volume to buy directly from clevo.

 

I think MegaBud`s reply was an interesting one
But I don`t think it works like that. You see, resellers have more direct contact with customers, whereas Sager deals in a more distant way. That`s the impression I got and what made not buy directly from Sager,but from a reseller.I do however have the 2 year sager warranty..

 

Buy low, sell high is a much better business plan than Loose money on each unit, but make it up in volume

 

i think it's sager's way of selling their products to a wider range of customers throughout the country. they can give the reseller a little discount so they both make a profit from the sale. this would encourage the reseller to do his own advertising and marketing to generate more sales for essentially the same product. it's just better to allow others to rebrand your main products and split the profits than not having any sales or lower number of sales.

you are still buying a sager laptop because they are the ones that deal with the major tech support issues, anyway.

 

Only a very small percentage of Sager's sales are through their website.

Others here, including yourself, have pretty well covered the rest of the reasons a manufacturer...who specializes in manufacturing...uses distributors and resellers.

 

Too capital-intensive, for one thing. E.g., Sager's operation requires a lot more plant, equipment, staff, and inventory than that of the typical reseller.

On the other hand, in order to replicate the network of resellers in-house, Sager would overstretch itself and have to divert precious capital from its OEM function to its retail sales function.

Finally, there's the sales tax issue . If you've priced a system from HP or Dell recently, you'll notice that, no matter which state you live in, you get charged sales tax. By operating independently from each other, Sager (in CA) and the resellers (e.g., Xotic in NE, Powernotebooks in NV) manage to minize the number of customers they're required to collect sales tax from.