MARKETPLACE
NEWSLETTER
PAGE 5, JULY 30, 1974
We've said this many, many times before and ve say it again:
tfnen a machine can bring sufficient income
to amortize its cost within a reasonable
period of time and, while so doing, earn you
a decent return on your investment in
that machine, then the cost of the machine,
however high, is of little consequence.
We've been engaged in this industry since 1926 and every year, over these past 48 years,
we've heard this same wailing cry from operators, "The manufacturers are pricing themselves
out of business." This was said of Mills, Watling, Caille and other mfrs before the turn of
this century. It was most especially vociferous where Penny Arcade machines were concerned
during the 1900s and right up thru the 1920s. Even the old coin operated player piano and
early juke box mfrs of that same era heard this statement, "You're pricing yourselves out of
business", many, many times.
They didn't price themselves out of business. They vere forced out of business because
they wouldn't change. Because they didn't come up with new ideas to meet the changing re-
quirements of a new generation, the poet-War generation. Because they just wouldn't move up,
go ahead, modernize, meet the conditions of a new era. They believed and many so stated,
"What was good for dad is good enough for me."
Thie decade of the 1970s is a new era. An era where galloping inflation rules. No longer
prices for equip't like that of the '60s. Not even the same prices of last year or last month.
Instead, the kind of high prices due to galloping in.f lation, that will squeeze many and ~
a firm without sufficient finance, right out of this business.
It's happening with ever greater regularity. Bankruptcies and repossessions are being
heard more frequently. Conglomerates and financially PQWerful operators are gobbling up the
smalls. It is now estimated there are less than 7,500 ~wners of coin operated businesses
left in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. This includes operators, distributors and manufacturers.
They're not going out of business becauee of the high prices of machines. The expression
we've used for over 40 years and which is, once again headlined here, answers that. They're
going out of businees because they just won't change. Won't meet new conditions with new and
modern methods. Insist on going into today's business ring against the roughest, toughest,
braes knuckles kind of raging wild economy with big, soft pillows tied on their hands. They
wail, "I can't cut commission to my locations and, at the same time, make them a 'service
charge'."
So what's the alternative for the seller of machines when operators don't buy? Something,
dear operator friends, that's bound to happen unless you wake up out of yesterday and enter
into this new wild era of the 1970s just as tough, just as strong, just as full of guts and
plain old common sense as you were when you first entered into this industry. Because, just
like what happened in other, bigger industries, high powered crews of salesmen are going out
"leasing". "Leasing" machines to locations. The manufacturers won't be priced out of business
by such action. Read the expression that heads this article again! Get going! Get back in
business today!