Not sure, but some of the larger retailers probably sell by consignment, taking a % of each sale, otherwise, a lot of cash would be tied up in inventory they pay taxes on.
I can’t tell you about Leica, but having worked at a camera shop in Alaska, there’s very little margin on cameras. For instance, at the time, when the Sony A7C was current, there was only about a $200 markup on it. I got it for 50% off dealer cost working there and paid a little less than $800
The price to an authorized dealer is a very complicated thing. There is the origional invoice price which allows a very small margin. Then there are monthly, quarterly, annual, rebate, incentive, and advertising programs which adds meaningfully to margins. Leica offers a larger margin to dealers than most other brands.
Over 10 years ago I was able to view dealer pricing for Leica gear and I believe MSRP was around a 20 or 25% markup from the dealer net price in the book. I remember thinking that it was a bit higher than I expected. As Steve mentioned, dealers can receive additional discounts based on hitting sales plateaus and other incentives.
Quite a while back I worked in photo retail and at that time most high-end gear sold in the 10-15% dealer mark-up range over 'book net' prior to additional discounts (information about which generally was not shared by ownership/management with staff). It was extremely rare for someone to just walk in and buy a high ticket item at MSRP. There was a lot of haggling, unlike now with online purchasing at published prices.
Has anyone successfully haggled over price in an actual Leica Store? My feeling is it might be more doable at a Leica dealer.
there are authorized dealers and there a special authorized dealers that get an even better price. I have the full dealer price list for everything they sell and have thought of publishing it on leicaimages. but i also have friends who are authorized dealers and that would impact them.
