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I don’t know but is it illegal for a store to sell Windstones if they aren’t a licensed dealer of Windstones?
There’s one store here that has me wondering, since it’s selling them so much higher then a place that, due to their knowledge of everything windstone, I think is one that gets them direct from you guys. This is like a $200 difference on things like the emperors. And one is just upstairs of the other in the same mall. I won’t name names unless I have to though I don’t want to tarnish anyones rep unless they are actually not supposed to be selling them.
Could the price differences be part of customs and shipping to Canada?
I’m not sure if you have to be a dealer to sell?Well both stores are in West Edmonton Mall. So they *should* be the same shipping right? And one is listed on the dealer’s page Donna Rose Treasures, and the other one is also in West Ed, but is not on the Dealer’s page – so I’m wondering if they are allowed to even sell these things. On the dealer’s requirements on the website here, they aren’t supposed to be too close to another dealer, and they are practically spitting distance from each other.
The Donna Rose Treasures (is a dealer on the foreign dealers page) is the cheaper one, it’s a small markup on the web prices.
The other one always sells at about a 200% markup on the internet price (for us regular folk) and is not on the dealer’s page. I was wondering if they were supposed to have Windstone’s permission to sell – since I don’t know where they are getting their stuff from. I asked and they won’t answer, but they have a few broken and a few discontinued things like the oriental (in ruby).
EDIT: And a few things that in the store are listed as only available direct from Windstone Editions, like the gold fledgie.
What is it, some kind of antique dealer? o.o Sounds like they’re buying them at full price themselves (plus shipping) and then selling them at whatever profit they can make. Maybe off ebay, even? I wonder why they wouldn’t tell you…how shady. u.u I’m not sure how that’s competition for Donna Rose’s though, given the high prices…who’d pay for theirs when they could go downstairs and buy whatever for way less?
It sounds like the store is buying things at full retail and marking them up to resell. I don’t think it’s “illegal,” but they probably won’t sell too many. I think legally, stores can sell what they want (unless it’s booze or guns, etc).
I know what store you are talking about, and I talked to Suzie about them both a while back as well, they are allowed to sell. They also have the same store in at least one mall in Vancouver and they are just as expensive. Also over half their stock has pretty bad damage. One of our forum members had a BF that worked there as well. I did buy my Cat Wizard there, and they pretty much never keep original packaging.
Dragon87 wrote:I don’t know but is it illegal for a store to sell Windstones if they aren’t a licensed dealer of Windstones?
You can sell anything you own for whatever price you like. I think this applies even in Canada.
The only problem would be, if you are an authorised retailer and you do something against Windstone’s Retailer Policy, Windstone could refuse to wholesale to you in the future. This may not pose a problem if you have some other source of product.
Remember Beanie Babies? We tried like heck to get an account with TY, but each time we called we were told “Sorry, we have no retailer openings. Call back next month.” Eventually we just got fed up of this and started buying on the secondary market. We’d buy at full retail or more and mark the Beanies up to what we figured we could sell them for. I know that some Beanies were imported to the USA in car-loads from Canada. This was illegal because TY has separate and exclusive distribution in Canada and the USA, but the same thing could happen with Windstone sculptures going from the USA to Canada. I doubt that Windstone Editions could do anything about that (even if they wanted to) unless the source of the sculptures was a retailer in the USA acting as an illegal distributor and selling wholesale. If you have any evidence that this was happening, you should let John know. But these days you can pick up stuff cheap on eBay, damaged or not, and try to resell it any way you like.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that you don’t need to buy from Windstone to be a “dealer”. But it helps…
Ok I was just curious. And no, they don’t sell much, since they are so highly marked up. But the Donna Rose Treasures, upstairs, apparently they sell quite a bit (they have a very tempting no interest payment policy which would make something big more affordable. Maybe in the future I will check that out).
I can tell you what is going on there. I use to buy all my stuff at the store on the lower level in west edmonton mall back when kaylan imports brought the pieces in for them. Infact I bought the entire bg dragon family from them, and they even gave me a 20% discount because I bought in “bulk”. when kaylan stopped importing windstones to Canada. the store on the lower level couldnt get them in at a resonable price. the store up stairs has a contract to be the only licensed distributor in the mall therefore they get them at better prices through windstone. the store on the lower level pays full retail then marks them up to try and get some extra cash. last time i was in there they had a ruby oriental listed for $600.00 and the emperors were all over $800.00. I feel like standing outside that store and telling them to go upstairs so they dont get ripped off. So there is only really 1 licensed Windstone dealer in the mall. there is actually a 3rd store in west edmonton mall that sells windstones as well. last time i was in there they had a couple of the castles at reasonable prices.
Well they dropped the emps a bit, they are now 599.99. Probably because they don’t sell. 🙄
If I buy it will be from Donna Rose they offer no interest payment plans over 3 months, so that would make them more affordable for me.
That and I don’t like broken windstones for higher then the retail price 🙄
There was another store that sold them, it was right across from the brick on the lower level, but it closed down, I only know of the 2 now Millinium and Donna Rose, where is the third now?
I don’t know of a third in West Ed but there’s one called Nazca in Millwoods Town Center too. It has a small selection, but they have a sale right now! Brown griffin chick for $50-ish? Not bad, but they are more overpriced then Donna Rose.
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