david_h wrote:
It could just be that the time costs for sorting out a one-off international shipment to a new private customer (not a dealer) make it commercially unviable.
That would be fine, but considering the OP:
Innocent Bystander wrote:
My friend ... is helping with a business startup in ... Rwanda. They're trying to build the first pianos built in Africa, for thirty years
... I don't think being a one-off was ever the issue.
Now, it may be that the supplier has no
faith that the Rwandan venture could produce more than one, but they're not helping matters that way. That would be mere conjecture and excuses when there's a potential for business to be had, to say nothing of striking a blow for bettering African economic development. At least on paper, this last has always seemed to be a Pan-African priority, or so one would think. Are these just hollow mouthings in the end, then? If mere caution is in fact the case, such judgments strike me as premature, and as overreach. If the supplier doesn't like the odds and has to be so Scroogely about it, they can always price accordingly (even at the risk of a dulled competitive edge), because the situation in Rwanda suggests that the customer will be quite good for the money either way.
It is common practice for suppliers who don't insist on bulk orders that the less the customer buys, the more the customer pays; so if a supplier doesn't insist on bulk orders, I'm not 100% convinced that a one-off is the issue. Why would you be in business to supply only droves upon droves of pianos, and not the occasional one as well? That seems like a very lopsided business model in the world of pianos.