Video prices drop

Press, 14 December 1985, Page 8

Video prices drop

[From page l]

customs duty on a microwave had been cut from 40 per cent to 5 per cent and the duty on a video had been cut from 45 per cent to nil.

“It will mean I will have to forgo thousands of dollars in income. Some of the distributors, I have heard, will lose millions,” said Mr Mells. “I think some smaller places will probably go under.”

Mr Glen Percasky, a mana-, ger at one of the Lanes Appliance Centre stores, said that microwaves would come down about 20 per cent. He did not think the price of videos would drop very much because of the present price war. “When the dust settles, they will be lucky if there is a drop of 3 or 4 per cent on videos as they stand today,” he said.

Mr Percasky said that

Lanes had been caught out by the announcement as it had just printed an advertising pamphlet — “a quarter of our catalogue is now irrelevant.”

The general manager of Smiths City Market, Mr Peter Leeming, said the store had been tying all day to get hold of its distributor to get details of the tariff reductions. . . He believed it would take some- time for the price reductions to filter through but Smiths City Market would remain competitive.