I am a huge fan of Apple but… also a fan of reality so I'll share this story here.
This fun anecdote is about what I think is Apple's treatment of other companies' pricing rules — The Apple Company Store at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino used to sell a variety of clothing, accessories, and various items including, seasonally, Lego Mindstorms kits.
My impression from having observed Lego over the years is that they have very strict retail pricing rules. I have no other evidence for this than what I've seen in the market.
Each year at the Apple Company Store, when Christmas season rolled around, the store would get Lego Mindstorms in stock. One year, we decided to buy a set.
The store is frequented by Apple employees, who get a steep discount on Apple merchandise. But Lego… they have (I think) strict rules about discounts, so what was Apple to do here?
Now I am making some guesses here, to be fair. But I found it very interesting that there at the store they had a large pile of Mindstorms sets that all had mysteriously carefully damaged boxes, which looked like the corner of the box had been gently stepped on, all in the same way, and that were all marked down significantly, something like 30 or 40% for "damage." Inside, the sets were fine.
It could have been just a coincidence, but my spidey senses were telling me it was something else… I suspect it was Apple, not able to mark the items down for employees due to strict Lego corporate rules about when sets can be marked down and when they cannot (sound familiar? Apple is pretty strict about pricing as well, in my understanding). And they found a loophole in that damaged items could be marked down.
So, somehow, the items ended up "damaged", as a nice holiday special gift item for employees (or for anyone who came into the shop, lucky for me).
These days, the Apple Company Store after a revamp does not carry as much third party merchandise, so I don't know if this is still a thing.
This tactic is in no way specific to Apple or Lego, in many businesses with high markup they want to (in specific cases) sell at a lower price without breaking their contracts, insulting their costumers and inviting scalpers. So they sell items that can’t be resold, aren’t wanted by the costumers that buy at the original price and are not covered by their contracts.
This fun anecdote is about what I think is Apple's treatment of other companies' pricing rules — The Apple Company Store at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino used to sell a variety of clothing, accessories, and various items including, seasonally, Lego Mindstorms kits.
My impression from having observed Lego over the years is that they have very strict retail pricing rules. I have no other evidence for this than what I've seen in the market.
Each year at the Apple Company Store, when Christmas season rolled around, the store would get Lego Mindstorms in stock. One year, we decided to buy a set.
The store is frequented by Apple employees, who get a steep discount on Apple merchandise. But Lego… they have (I think) strict rules about discounts, so what was Apple to do here?
Now I am making some guesses here, to be fair. But I found it very interesting that there at the store they had a large pile of Mindstorms sets that all had mysteriously carefully damaged boxes, which looked like the corner of the box had been gently stepped on, all in the same way, and that were all marked down significantly, something like 30 or 40% for "damage." Inside, the sets were fine.
It could have been just a coincidence, but my spidey senses were telling me it was something else… I suspect it was Apple, not able to mark the items down for employees due to strict Lego corporate rules about when sets can be marked down and when they cannot (sound familiar? Apple is pretty strict about pricing as well, in my understanding). And they found a loophole in that damaged items could be marked down.
So, somehow, the items ended up "damaged", as a nice holiday special gift item for employees (or for anyone who came into the shop, lucky for me).
These days, the Apple Company Store after a revamp does not carry as much third party merchandise, so I don't know if this is still a thing.