Where to buy 100 macs/year

[thejadedmonkey]

For the past year or two, the company I work at has been buying Mac Mini's and Mac Pro's from Apple for use in a propriatory software solution. As it turns out, buying more than 3 macs per year is against the rules, and Apple will no longer sell to us. We found a 3rd party reseller who would sell to us, but Apple has since contacted the authorized reseller and told them not to sell to us anymore.

Apple does not offer a way to buy multiple units, unless you buy in bulk, which we don't do. We sell via a just-in-time model, and only carry inventory that we need.

Apple will not allow us to become a reseller, as we do not buy enough macs per year. As Apple doesn't accept cash, we can't use cash either.

So, I was wondering, how would I - technically an LLC, not me personally - go about buying $100,000 worth of macs, in batches of 1 to 5 at a time?

And before anyone asks, these are not for export outside of the USA, so there's no customs or pricing issue. This is strictly USA/B2B.

 

[rdowns]

Find a local authorized reseller who needs your volume to meet his annual sales goals.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Find a local authorized reseller who needs your volume to meet his annual sales goals.

Will a local reseller be any better than a non-local reseller? Because as I understand it, Apple contacted the reseller we were using and explicitly told them to stop selling macs to us - Apple would have had to run the company credit card or mailing address against their own database to locate us.

 

[heehee]

Will a local reseller be any better than a non-local reseller? Because as I understand it, Apple contacted the reseller we were using and explicitly told them to stop selling macs to us - Apple would have had to run the company credit card or mailing address against their own database to locate us.

Call the Apple business unit. I buy a lot of Macs from them, not as much as you do and they have no problem selling it to me. Plus, they give me a 8% discount. If I need something urgent after hours, I go to the Apple store and just tell them the business name.

I'm not sure why Apple won't sell them do you.
http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313

Or you can PM Squilly.

 

[mobilehaathi]

Call the Apple business unit. I buy a lot of Macs from them, not as much as you do and they have no problem selling it to me. Plus, they give me a 8% discount. If I need something urgent after hours, I go to the Apple store and just tell them the business name.

I'm not sure why Apple won't sell them do you.
http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313

Or you can PM Squilly.

Too bad Squilly has left us permanently; I'm sure he could have hooked OP up with his brother for a small cut of the action.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

I'm not sure why Apple won't sell them do you.
http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313

Or you can PM Squilly.

I spoke with Kevin from Apple Business, and the gist of the conversation was that Apple wants to sell directly to the customer, so that they can assure that the entire process goes smoothly.

Since our need of buying macs is so that when we set them up at a clients' site we can assure that the entire process goes smoothly, it's a situation where our needs and Apple's - while being near identical - are in conflict.

Kevin directed me to first becoming a reseller, but we don't have enough volume. Then he suggested applying to become an Apple consultant, which is something we will need to look into, or getting an Apple consultant involved in our installs.

Already I have my reservations because the service value proposition is "Install, integrate, manage, and support 
 OS X-based systems.", and our software effectively turns the hardware into a kiosk devoid of OS X for all intents and purposes. However, I will pass everything along.

Thank you for your help. I'll post back of I have any more questions, or if we find a suitable resolution to our dilemma.

edit: There's a $700/year fee for the privilege of being allowed to buy Apple products. Can you say pretentious? And that's before Apple wants to know how many millions in liability insurance you have, and your annual income!? Somehow I don't think this is gonna work. I may have to give Kevin another call...

 

[heehee]

I spoke with Kevin from Apple Business, and the gist of the conversation was that Apple wants to sell directly to the customer, so that they can assure that the entire process goes smoothly.

Since our need of buying macs is so that when we set them up at a clients' site we can assure that the entire process goes smoothly, it's a situation where our needs and Apple's - while being near identical - are in conflict.

Kevin directed me to first becoming a reseller, but we don't have enough volume. Then he suggested applying to become an Apple consultant, which is something we will need to look into, or getting an Apple consultant involved in our installs.

Already I have my reservations because the service value proposition is "Install, integrate, manage, and support 
 OS X-based systems.", and our software effectively turns the hardware into a kiosk devoid of OS X for all intents and purposes. However, I will pass everything along.

Thank you for your help. I'll post back of I have any more questions, or if we find a suitable resolution to our dilemma.

Now I understand why Apple won't sell it to you. Good luck.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Now I understand why Apple won't sell it to you. Good luck.

Yeah. Like I said, I don't have high hopes. We've already started investigating other manufacturers' boxes to use instead of Apple's. It's really annoying though, that they'd willingly turn down over $100,000 in orders, simply because they can't give up any control.

 

[hallux]

Yeah. Like I said, I don't have high hopes. We've already started investigating other manufacturers' boxes to use instead of Apple's. It's really annoying though, that they'd willingly turn down over $100,000 in orders, simply because they can't give up any control.

Honestly, Apple is worth almost a TRILLION $ ($701 Billion give or take at last report), $100,000 is less than pocket change to them at this point. If the company was in a different situation financially, I could understand confusion.

If you're stripping their OS off the box and just using the hardware for the form-factor, that might be a contributing factor in their decision. If you're using the OS as it ships but putting your own overlay or skin on it, they have less of a complaint, though I'm sure they would prefer people see a non-skinned OS.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Honestly, Apple is worth almost a TRILLION $ ($701 Billion give or take at last report), $100,000 is less than pocket change to them at this point. If the company was in a different situation financially, I could understand confusion.

If you're stripping their OS off the box and just using the hardware for the form-factor, that might be a contributing factor in their decision. If you're using the OS as it ships but putting your own overlay or skin on it, they have less of a complaint, though I'm sure they would prefer people see a non-skinned OS.

It's a webapp, so it's actually a full screen web browser. We could - and do - support Windows, Linux, and OS X platforms.

And even if $100,000 if pocket change, at the end of the day Apple produces x86 PC's, and I'm trying to figure out how to purchase ~100 PC's/year from them. They're just incredibly difficult to work with, compared to Dell, Microsoft, or Fujitsu. I don't understand how they can get away with telling 3rd party retailers not to sell to a specific businesses.

 

[lowendlinux]

I just bought ours from a company called Mac Business Solutions in Maryland.

http://www.mbsdirect.com

I bought from them because Apple wouldn't ship my oMP where it needed to go, they had no issues and got it here as quick as possible.

 

[Vanilla Face]

You're trying to make it out like your business is buying and using Macs and Apple isn't letting you. You're reselling Macs and you are not an authorized reseller. It's concerning that you're running a business but can't see why Apple wouldn't allow you to do this. Apple wants to maintain certain standards of their customer's experience and it can't do that when some guy is selling them out of the back of a truck. Apple also has an obligation to its resellers to protect their interests. If you were an authorized reseller, would you be okay with some other guy selling the product without having to conform to the same standards you did?

That said, have you tried buying from Best Buy or another big box retailer using cash? How about Amazon?

 

[AllieNeko]

Apple is very iffy about such grey market resales. I'd suggest looking at Intel NUCs to replace the Mac Minis. They should do what you need, at a much lower cost.

 

[The Doctor11]

Why the hell doesn't Apple let people buy as much as they want?

 

[pdjudd]

Because as mentioned above, they want to prevent the resale market from compromising their sales process.

Apple wants to sell directly to the customer, so that they can assure that the entire process goes smoothly.

The only way that they can control the experience the way they want to is to be an authorized reseller or a consultant and these notably require some requirements (number volumes). They just can’t magically produce a small run of computers for one person without compromising their normal retail supply and ability to meet demand. They don’t want to be in the business of mostly selling to people who are not their customers. If you want that relationship, you have to set up that kind of formal relationship which Apple cannot control.

If you recall, this was a problem with the iPhone where day one buy tons of units to hoard them and sell them to other markets. The result is that consumers who really want the phones are unable to get them as readily and the ones that do aren’t really real customers.

They don’t have the ability to run their business based on random people who want to buy tons of inventory just to resell it. They have problems with maintaining inventory at times as it is.

 

[Meister]

I read this thread and find it to be a bizarre problem.
Where I live there are dozends of stores that sell macs.
You can just walk into any of them and buy a few. If you want more, you just walk in again and buy some more. The sales people don't know that you already bought a bunch, how would they?

 

[heehee]

I read this thread and find it to be a bizarre problem.
Where I live there are dozends of stores that sell macs.
You can just walk into any of them and buy a few. If you want more, you just walk in again and buy some more. The sales people don't know that you already bought a bunch, how would they?

There are Apple discounts for buying so many within a time frame. I get 7% discount from the Apple store. If you buy a bunch and they refer you to the business department. If you buy a bunch of Macs and you don't want a discount, something is wrong.

 

[Meister]

There are Apple discounts for buying so many within a time frame. I get 7% discount from the Apple store. If you buy a bunch and they refer you to the business department. If you buy a bunch of Macs and you don't want a discount, something is wrong.

The none store resellers where I life always give at least 12% discount. To everyone, at every volume. People only buy directly from the store here if they need a special BTO or just like going there for whatever reason.

 

[heehee]

The none store resellers where I life always give at least 12% discount. To everyone, at every volume. People only buy directly from the store here if they need a special BTO or just like going there for whatever reason.

And if you read the thread, Apple told the reseller to not sell it to the OP's company.

 

[Meister]

And if you read the thread, Apple told the reseller to not sell it to the OP's company.

How does a reseller know that it's for his company?

 

[heehee]

How does a reseller know that it's for his company?

Again, read the thread. Post #3 specifically.

 

[Meister]

Again, read the thread. Post #3 specifically.

Use a different reseller and pay cash.

 

[heehee]

Use a different reseller and pay cash.

That's what he's asking, genius.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Thanks for all of the help guys. I just wanted to follow up with what we ended up doing.

We found a retailer who would give us a few months' supply of minis until we could transition away from them to something else, so that's that. I think our sales reps will be pushing the Intel NUC's now.

To clear up a few questions:

Are we competing with resellers? No way, we load our computing hardware up with proprietary software. By the time we're done setting up your mac (or PC) with our software, you couldn't even open up Google.com in it.

Can we become a reseller? No. We don't do enough sales volume. Even if we did, Apple would never allow us (see above).

Can we become a consultant? No. Even if Apple didn't mind us setting up their macs like they were generic Intel computers, most of our money comes from grants that are for a company to provide a service. Not a company + consultant + Apple, which is what would have to happen if we went that route.

Can we pay cash Not for the amount of sales we do. Walking into Best Buy with $10,000 every other month just seems like a bad idea.