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Cranking 'Em Out (8/18/98)
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Of course, it doesn't do a whole lot of good to advertise something that you can't sell. Concerns about iMac availability continue to cast a pall over the celebrations, as most retailers put up the "Sold Out" signs before the iMac's debut weekend was through. More stock is expected this week, but Mac the Knife's sources state that Apple will only be able to produce about 180,000 iMacs by the end of August-- down from the 200,000 that sales wanted. Considering that Apple had 150,000 pre-orders as of a week ago, it looks like the backlog won't be filled for another few weeks at least.
By our estimates, if Apple is really spending $100 million on advertising the iMac between now and Christmas, and each iMac carries a profit margin of about 22% for Apple, they've got to sell about 350,000 of them at $1299 apiece in order to break even. We don't think that selling that many will be a problem-- but making them might be. If Apple really has a plant producing iMacs twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and it's still not nearly enough, well, it may just be time to add another plant...
...And none of this takes into account the massive backlog of orders for high-end PowerBook G3's, either. With several people now squarely in their third month of waiting, it's really become a major problem. Now that Apple's got some seriously compelling products to offer, when will they actually be able to deliver?
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SceneLink (950)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 8/18/98 episode: August 18, 1998: Alas, the iMac Golden Ticket promotion has shuffled off this mortal coil. Meanwhile, Apple's pushing its new consumer machine with a healthy mix of four Goldblum-voiced TV commercials, while desperately trying to crank out enough machines to meet demand...
Other scenes from that episode: 948: Goodbye Golden Ticket (8/18/98) Sadly, it's time to mourn the loss of a marketing plan that never got off the ground-- though, ironically, it made bigger press than most of Apple's marketing plans could hope to. Yes, friends, the Golden Ticket promotion never happened and presumably never will... 949: Hello Goldblum Voiceover (8/18/98) As for iMac promotional campaigns that Apple's actually running, well, we'd have to say that the television commercials are probably the most important. Sure, the twelve-page brochure destined for the pages of Newsweek and the like are nice and attention-getting, and it's great that we'll soon see the iMac's sleek curves on billboards sprinkled throughout our fair city, but TV is the omnipresent and omnipotent controller of all...
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