Dans le message de news:
[email protected],
Mike Jacoubowsky <
[email protected]> a réfléchi, et puis a déclaré :
> Are you certain that it was a "failure" that sales didn't hit the
> minimum quota? Trek did, if I read it correctly, pay Greg the minimum
> royalty as required in the contract.
Yes, I'm reasonably certain. If you were, for example, a car salesman, with
a guarantee of $250 a week, and almost all customers were directed to
someone else, would you consider that the employer was giving you a fair
chance to earn your expected living? Secondly, does the car enterprise
benefit by giving away money for low returns? Does it benefit from
mothballing a brand name? I think we'd all like to know, but that is far
from reasonable to hope to learn, as facts.
> Greg's action argues that a
> minimum is just that... a minimum target, something which you'd
> generally exceed. HOWEVER- I wasn't at that negotiating session (I
> doubt any of us were) and it could very well be that Greg was more
> interested in achieving a certain number of $$$ rather than bike
> sales per se.
Were that the case, I imagine the route would be to terminate the contract
amicably and go with another large entity. Using my earlier example, it
would be like negotiating the guarantee of a per capita quota of potential
customers, or leaving one dealer's shop for another's.
> In that scenario, Greg simply felt that his name was
> worth X dollars, period, and if Trek were to sell even more than
> expected, he'd be further rewarded.
If Trek wanted to keep a potential rivalry from erupting into a business
feud, detrimental to both parties, perhaps Trek was willing to increase the
cost of keeping a competitor out of the game. Just a possibility, although
I can't suggest it is the likely one. If that were the case, and Greg
agreed in principle, I bet he would not have settled at the level that was
agreed. I think this is partially evidenced even in the stuff you have
written.
> That is a similar concept to business rents where, if sales exceed a
> certain amount, you owe the landlord more.
In the sense that _all_ license agreements foresee (at their optimistic
origins) rising benefit levels, you are correct. However, when the object
is not to see increased sales, thus royalties, it is irrelevant.
> That amount (the sales
> volume) is generally set pretty darned high, and is basically a
> protection for the landlord in the event the property is worth more
> than expected. The landlord would love to see someone owe that
> additional money, but isn't generally expecting it. And if that
> target is hit, everyone, including the retailer, is happy. The
> retailer being happy not because he's giving the landlord more money,
> but because he has a lot more money in his pocket to give.
Typical mall rent schemes, yes, although there are negative variants we need
not go into.
> I have no inside reason to believe this to be true. It's just one of
> those things that came to mind as I was reading through the
> documents, based upon my own business dealings.
I think the parties each know part of the truth and remain ignorant of other
elements. But it does bear noting that the Armstrong shareholding in later
years may weigh more heavily on the decisions Trek made, on balance. It's
true that Armstrong, as shareholder, would benefit by increased Lemond sales
going to the bottom line, but if there were other motivations that tempered
the hunger for that specific profit, including the business judgment that
supporting a minor line did not generate the returns that the promotional
efforts would cost, that could also lead to the results Lemond complains of
in the papers.
I'm reading you - hope you will continue the dialogue.
--
Sandy
-
Darwinism, born in ideological struggle, has never escaped from an intimate
reciprocal relationship with worldviews exported from and imported into the
science. No one challenges the claim that evolutionary theory has had a wide
effect on social theory. It is a cliché of cultural history that the
explanation of evolution by natural selection served as an ideological
justification for laissez-faire capitalism and the colonial domination of
the lesser breeds without the law
- Richard Lewontin
