MacRyu – The Worst Mac Blog in Singapore, and Some Say the World

So it finally came.

For the past few months, rumors have been floating around that iShop was going to shut its doors and leave the Apple business forever. There are people who doubt the rumors, saying that there is no way in hell that someone as famous as the person who made F1 in Singapore possible was going to close down his Apple business.

However, since about a year or so ago, iShop’s performance has been going down the drain.

iShop, once “Asia’s biggest Apple Reseller”, was never one of the more popular Apple Premium Resellers in Singapore, constantly losing out to Epicenter and Multimedia Integrated in terms of sales. Few knew about iShop’s location as well, as Epicenter has the advantage of being the nearest to the Orchard MRT station and the history of being “Applecentre Orchard”.

Despite all these disadvantages, iShop HAD quality service, HAD staff who knew the local Apple market, HAD finances and connections that made them a very close partner with Apple Singapore, being entrusted with Apple training for the region, and being one of only two educational suppliers in Singapore for Apple.

iShop’s main mistake was probably its management. The management put in place at iShop was one that is highly experienced in FASHION AND APPAREL sales, not computer sales. They also failed to promote their talented sales staff, losing allmany of them in the past two years to Apple resellers such as Cathay Photo and Epicenter. Wrong decisions(regarding sales commissions) were made in the hope of stopping the neverending losses the physical shop made, resulting in loss of morale, followed by a huge drop in quality of service.

Servicing-side wise, the story was most likely roughly the same. There had been a constant decrease in numbers of Mac users who are willing to send in their faulty Macs to iShop, instead opting for the more famous Epicenter (servicing done by Sapura) and eServ/Micro2000 (who provides probably the better service experience compared to other Apple service centres locally). iShop also stopped most of their outreach to local institutions the last time I checked.

Furthermore, in recent years, with the increase in numbers of smaller sized Apple resellers such as iStudio, conveniently located in neighborhoods and prominent locations, there was absolutely no need for anyone to go to iShop to do their servicing or to buy Apple accessories. iShop became the local “Apple Museum”, where people go to play with their Macs, take a look around and leave without buying anything.

When iShop started, it showed much promise, with many hoping that it could overtake Epicenter as the more popular Apple Premium Reseller (many today still hate Epicenter to the core for its practices). Alas, it was a sad tale of lost opportunities and wrong decisions.

Now, hopefully I can get some nice deals at the firesale……

P.S. This post was written with information that I acquired personally, should there be errors I am most willing to be corrected.

Singapore Mac users, let me pose a question to you.

Where did you buy your last Mac?

In recent years, due to the sudden increase of the popularity of Macs, many local computer and consumer electronics chain jumped on board the Apple bandwagon and became Apple resellers.

Which spiked a lot of comments of the non-Mac people and casual consumers to say “Wah. Apple opening more Apple Stores in Singapore leh. Cool”.

They probably never thought that they could not be more wrong.

Apple don’t have a single Apple Store in Singapore. More new Apple resellers are just opening up. And this might not be such a good thing after all.

Let me explain, with my limited knowledge of Apple reseller policy from working with various resellers and Apple Singapore, how the retail side of things work.

Before I start though, forget the Apple Online Store. The Apple Online Store is really Apple. And is probably the only place you should buy from if you want protection from sudden changes in line-up.

For example, if you buy a MacBook today, and a new one comes out tomorrow, you are stuck with the old one if you buy it from a retail store in Singapore. That includes buying it from Universities, if Sapura still has not changed their policy. If you buy it from the Apple Online Store though, you can ask for an exchange. Therefore, the much safer purchase route.

Okay back to retail. There are basically two types of retail resellers, the normal reseller and the Apple Premium Reseller(APR). The former, well, no exact rules to buying and selling. The latter though, have to follow a strict policy of how to sell their Macs. Their stores’ design and display have to be advised and checked by Apple Singapore, and the inventory they carry have to follow strict rules as well, such as having no competitors’ computers.

Resellers don’t have to be strictly APR though. For example, Pacific City has a branch in IMM Singapore that is APR, having the Apple Store concept and design, with no Acer computers in the same store, but for their other stores in eg. Marina Square and Plaza Singapore, they are non-APR and Pacific City could carry Acers in them. And since the non-APR stores don’t have to follow Apple’s rules, they could place whatever they like in the display, even if it’s not the current lineup.

Which brings us back to the problem that prompted me to write this post in the first place. While in the olden days (just 3 or 4 years ago really, not THAT old), even the old non-APR resellers(like SGL Marketing, an old-time MUGS favourite vendor, or Pacific City, who occasionally broke the rule and tried to sell old stock a day after the new ones are released) will be nice enough not to openly display old models without specifically stating that they are for clearance, these days I see a lot of new non-APR resellers doing exactly the opposite.

For example, I saw certain non-APR resellers (but fashioned their stores to look very very APR-like with white furniture and green t-shirts) displaying, in the following order, their MacBooks. MacBook White, MacBook Unibody, MacBook Pro OLD, MacBook Black, MacBook Pro Unibody, with nothing to differentiate between the old lines and the new lines. I suspect that, unless you say specifically, no one is going to tell you the difference.

What is wrong with this?

The problem here is that, a casual non-Apple-fan consumer might decide to buy a present for a relative, walks into a Song Brothers store(of Sim Lim Square “fame”), looks at the MacBook range, and decided to buy a MacBook Black thinking that it’s not really that different from other MacBooks. Note that, here I am assuming the staff who served the consumer is nasty and did not warn the consumer that it is old stock and not the latest range when buying. Note again, however, that resellers have a higher priority to sell off their old stock since Apple will never take it back, and might give their promoters more incentive to sell off old stock. So the consumer buys the MacBook Black, gives it to the relative only to have the relative complain that it is not the latest MacBook Unibody and that the consumer did not even buy the MacBook Black at refurbished prices (maybe cheaper than it used to be, but not as cheap as refurbished ones), causing unhappiness.

And then, because the consumer have no knowledge that it’s really the reseller and not Apple, blames Apple for selling old stock openly.

Some may argue that the resellers have to sell off their old stock. Can’t the resellers be nice enough to place them away from the latest range and put a big tag “For clearance! Good discounts!” on them?

Maybe they can’t. Sometimes when the line refreshes prices drop, and since the resellers are making marginal profits (Apple sells the systems to reseller at near MSRP), they can’t knock that much off the price.

It seems that Apple is being terrible to their resellers here, as Apple won’t take back old stock, but do you hear iShop, Multimedia Integrated, and Epicenter complaining? (They do grumble, but not openly) You don’t. Cause local resellers make their profits by marking up the prices of cheap accessories.

In the end, the resellers themselves chose to become resellers, so they can’t complain. But consumers do have a choice of not buying from these formerly long-time Sim Lim Square mindset-based Apple resellers, that offers the Sim Lim Square buying experience instead of one that is Apple-crafted.