[TenTec] Corsairs, Pro II, etc hi hi....interesting replies!

[Ron Notarius WN3VAW]

Tim,

I don't remember exactly when TenTec went factory only, but it was sometime
in the very late 1980's or early 1990's.  Hopefully Scott will chime in here
with the date, I'm sure he has it in his records somewhere.

If I can be permitted to digress/reminisce for a moment:

There were a lot of stores that were TenTec dealers... of course, remember
that there used to be a lot more local ham stores.  The place where I
worked, Westec Electronics, opened in 1982 (the owner was an early-retired
Westinghouse manager who talked his family into funding the store) and
lasted about 4-5 years, done in by the proliferation of 1-800 numbers.  But
I'll come back to that in a sec.  In any case, many of the TenTec dealers
were little storefronts like Westec, because in order to be a Kenwood or
ICOM or Yaesu dealer, you had to meet certain requirements (in business so
long, do so much business, etc.)

This is not to say that the smaller stores didn't sell K / I / Y gear.  They
bought it from the bigger dealers.  We dealt with EGE (now HRO's East Coast
stores).  The big guys could buy in volume with volume discounts, sell it to
us below retail and still make a buck -- and still could undersell us.  It
made attention to detail and personal service a plus, why otherwise deal
locally?  In any case, TenTec, Dentron (remember them?), Azden, and so forth
didn't have the dealer restrictions that the Big Zone25 Three had, so they
had more dealers to, ah, deal with directly; and they usually sold to the
dealers for the same price (not always of course), which made pricing TenTec
and other gear more competitve between the little stores and the big chains.

What helped kill off many of the little stores were the 1-800 numbers, state
sales taxes, and cheap hams who didn't price things out completely.  Here's
an example:

I once spent over an hour with one customer comparing various hand helds.
He settled on an ICOM (an IC02AT, I think) then started haggling on price.
We reached what we both felt was a fair price, but he wanted to think about
it for a day.  He then walked out of the store, down to the 7-11 a few
storefronts down in the strip mall, and called AES Milwaukee to order it --
to save $10 on the base price of the rig plus sales tax (about $12).  How'd
I know?  I went to the same store to grab a coke and caught him on the pay
phone (cell phones?  In 1985?)

Here's the kicker... yes, they beat us by $10 on the radio.  But they also
charged him full list price for an extra battery pack, speaker mike, leather
case, and a desk charger.  And S&H was at least $12 on the package.  He was
in griping a few weeks later about this when he was buying a Cushcraft 5/8
magmount for his car, and showed us the paperwork.  Had he looked at all the
costs, he could have bought the rig locally, had everything faster, and
saved about $15 on the net price.

The Kenwood TS-430S in it's heyday was another good example of this.  I
think our price was about $650 or so.  We demo'd that rig quite a bit, and
at first, a lot of guys bought from the big outfits to save $10-25.  What
they didn't catch was that the big guys would then charge them full list on
the filters, the power supplies, the mike, etc -- we didn't, we'd try to
give a complete package with discounts off list on everything.  (Biggest
ripoff, IMHO, was the alternate non-matching Kenwood PS, which was either a
near perfect clone of the Astron RS-20A -- the on/off switch was on the
other side of the front panel, but otherwise they looked identical -- or was
being made OEM by Astron for Kenwood.  We sold the Astron's for $89, I think
the Kenwood equivalent was $149.  Do the math... including sales tax...)

Now we did good on selling filters, antennas, coax, connectors, accessories,
books, magazines, etc.  But that ultimately wasn't enough to keep the store
in business long term (and there were many other problems I'm not going
into, suffice to say this wasn't the only reason).  But just keep in mind
that if you have a local store, and you only use them to view new stuff to
play with but buy it elsewhere to save a buck or two, you may be helping to
doom the longevity of the store.

Now, you may be disappointed that you can no longer walk into your local
store to buy TenTec gear.  But keep this in mind:  You no longer have a
dealer markup involved (which can be 5 - 25% depending on the item and the
quantity it's purchased in and other factors), and you no longer have to
deal with the "give away the razor but make money on the razor blades"
mentality of too many dealer networks.

My apologies if I rambled a little too long on this!  It was a fun store to
work in, most of the time (even got a picture of myself on KDKA-TV, standing
on the store roof like a schmuck, pointing a Cushcraft 2 M yagi at Owen
Garriot the first time Skylab was supposed to talk to us hams... which got
delayed because of all of the news media coverage of said event.  Come to
think of it, I came in early that day, and never did get paid for the extra
time!) and I really enjoyed playing with the toys.  Because of my bus
schedules, I got in over an hour before the store opened at 10, so at 9 AM
every day, W1AW code practice, which helped me get my Extra.  I was sorry
when the time came to leave the store, and 6 months later, it was gone.  So
it goes.

73, ron wn3vaw

'Never attribute to malice that which is adequately
  explained by stupidity.' --Hanlon's Razor

----- Original Message -----
From: <tlogan7 at cox.net>
To: <tentec at contesting.com>
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 7:13 AM
Subject: [TenTec] Corsairs, Pro II, etc hi hi....interesting replies!


Hi folks -
Got all kinds of interesting responses both direct and on the TT
reflector......among them was Ron's interesting comment:

 "I worked at a local store, now closed, and TenTec had a dealer network"

When did Ten Tec have a dealer net work and who handled their product? I had
never heard that....very interesting bit of "history".

Also, I got the overall impression that the Kenwood 850S is used quite abit,
especially in Europe, by a lot of contest enthusiasts. I found that to be
interesting as well!

And finally, to clarify something about my own curiosity. I find it
interesting to compare technological change. One of several reasons I bought
a Corsair II was to be able to put a no-DSP, PTO type rig next to a state of
the art rig (Pro II). I don't really see any reason (other than cost), not
to reap the benefits of the brilliant minds that design things like the Pro
II.......but historically, putting a Corsair next to a Pro II is just darn
fascinating! About as close to a "time machine" as you can get. Besides,
it's cheaper than putting a Model A next to my Toyota for the pure joy of
experiencing a bit of histiry :-) Thanks for all the great input folks!
73/Tim NZ7C

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