THERE IS no law forbidding a Filipino to make a living. Even amidst the excruciatingly oppressive atmosphere of starting a trade in this rotten country where a businessman would even get penalized and discouraged from the onset by the combined evil forces of the town mayor, the DTI, the license bureau of the municipio, and the BIR - enterpreneurial Filipinos braved it just to survived. On the event the oppression is too much to bear, he wiggles his way to survive by joining the underground economy. He would sell commodities from deep fried abnoy balut-aborted duck eggs, barbecued chicken intestines to specialized services like creating reading glasses na pahulugan. My point is, Sights & Sound by all means, has the God-given right to make a living. In this case, peddling two Infocus front projectors for home cinema enthusiasts. S & S, surely, has to contend before, and even at the moment, with lecherous buwayas who collects the taxes. And its not only them: There's also Customs who'd levy 7% for every consumer electronic goods the kind that S & S sells - and even more than 7%.
But its not everytime that the enterpreneur is the one being disadvantaged. In some cases, he's in fact the exploiter, the profiteer, the price-schemer. This describes the Infocus importer who imposes a high-price policy on Infocus projectors and nobody checks the ethical implication of his monolithic hold on the highly specialized market. By selling front projectors, S & S recognizes that there's an under-served market for home cinema. I would have seize the opportunity too, if I had a distribution/showcase arm, a deep capital, and guts, just like S & S. But by consenting to sell Infocus, S & S made itself an unwitting accomplice of Infocus-Philippines who lacks the scruple. It may mean going along with the unscrupulous act of overpricing your projector by as much as 55% more than the prevailing street price tagged in practically all civilized markets. It means tolerating the mischief of asking P170,000 for a model, when in fact it could be sold, fair & square, for only P99,000. Or in the promo blitz S & S posted, slashing P50,000 from the initial P149,000 - all in the eye-blink passage of just three days. Bakit niyo ibibentang P149,000 puwede pala ninyong gawing ninety-nine lang? Bakit P69,000 gayung puwede naman palang forty-nine lang? Thats a savings of P30,000. Naglalaro ba kayo sa presyo - are you doing price-gouging?
S & S should reconsider this consorting with Infocus, because in the long haul, its self-defeating. This kind of business model where a monopoly corners the market and doing so qualifiably gouges the helpless market - could not get sustained forever. People does not remain deluded, people raises questions and when they do, hopefully S & S could call Infocus on the phone and urged the scoundrel to have a little business soul-searching. In the audio-video dealership community, Infocus is being whispered about as "salbahe talaga sa presyo." This Infocus importer is the same channel that distributes your JBL speakers and other high-end brands. Hence everytime you - PDVD fellows, buys a JBL or an Infocus home theater equipments, you're dealing with these Judases. If S & S is truly sincere, it would do well to post its LAST, LAST PRICE for both Infocus X9 and X10 here in PinoyDVD. Ano ba talaga ang tunay na presyo nito?
