To: Maher Sid-Ahmed who wrote (5092 ) 12/16/1997 1:10:00 AM From: Michael Coley Read Replies (2) | Respond to
RE: Channel Check - Arlington, TX. **ON TOPIC**First glance. I walked down the aisles, looking at the endcaps. The first one I came to was an Iomega end-cap with a large number of Zip Plus and some Zip's. (I don't remember if they were parallel or SCSI.) The next endcap was a SyQuest endcap with SyJet, EZ230, and SyQuest 270 (?). No other removable storage on endcaps. Next, I walked through the area where they have pallets of items out in the open. There were a couple Iomega pallets that appeared fairly picked over and a SyQuest EZ230 pallet that was pristine. I don't know if it was recently restocked or if it just wasn't moving.Asking about SparQ. Next, I tracked down a salesman and asked if he had any SparQ drives or disks. He walked me down the aisle where most of the removable storage is, pointed to the SparQ drives, then to the SparQ cartridges. There were 16 three-packs of SparQ cartridges. (Eight stacked on top of eight others--fully stocked for the area provided.) There were close to 50 SparQ drives. It looked like three had been purchased. While I was there, someone picked up a SyJet, looked at cartridges for it, then put it back. I don't think he bought anything.The Competition. After the salesman left, I reviewed the rest of the shelves. Iomega outnumbered SyQuest about 2:1 on shelf space. Iomega had a large number of Zip Plus on the shelves. SyQuest had a good mix of SyJet, SparQ, EZ230, and the 270 drive mentioned above. Iomega also had Ditto 800, Ditto 3200, and the new Ditto Max. There were other removables, but all together they didn't have half of the shelf space that SyQuest did. Here was the big shocker, though. There were NO ZIP CARTRIDGES on the shelves. This is the first time that I've ever seen a store ANYWHERE that didn't have Zip cartridges.The Confused Customer (and Salesman). I picked up a Ditto Max and was considering buying it. A salesman walked through, so I started asking him questions. "Does this come in an external SCSI version?" He had no clue. I mentioned that there sure were a lot of options. The salesman quickly directed me to a SyQuest EZ230 and said that this was the best one. In his words, it blows away that P.O.S. ZIP. (I had to ask what P.O.S. stood for--if you don't know, don't ask...) I told him that I didn't know anyone who owned one, and he said "yeah, that's where Zip has an advantage." I asked about an external SCSI with higher capacity. He looked all over the shelves and couldn't find anything. When asked if SparQ came in SCSI, he didn't know. (It doesn't and won't.)Nothing Selling? I went and looked at TV's, software, and other stuff. About an hour later I came back and I couldn't tell that any of the SparQ stuff had been sold. The disks were still fully stocked. Each time that I was in the aisle, there were different people looking at the SparQ's. Maybe they were all Iomega bulls, though. <TIC> I don't think anyone bought one in the hour that I was there.Conclusion. As far as SyQuest goes, it looks like they are getting good shelf space (although still not as much as Iomega). They're also getting good recommendations from the sales force (at least at the Fry's in Arlington, TX on Monday night <G>). But it's hard to tell if they're selling in big volume, though.i1.net
