Quote Originally Posted by bobsticks
I would imagine that your friend is the exception to the rule and is fortunate. Apex is also a company that didn't make replacement parts for its products yet, perplexingly, offered warranties. Didn't thay have something like 40 million dvd players die over a couple of years? My understanding is that's one of the reasons why the CEO is in jail...in China.

Perhaps not a business model that works for everyone.
The disposable TV business model works if the objective is to quickly move a large volume of TVs, and sell them for cheap without regard to aftersales support or customer loyalty.

Apex and Vizio are kindred spirits because both companies' primary function is marketing. Neither company manufactures anything, does much R&D, or even handle customer service calls. Everything is outsourced. Vizio is a billion dollar company with less than 100 employees. Apex WAS a billion dollar company with less than 100 employees.

Apex didn't make replacement parts available because all of their production runs were one-off contracts. Once the outsource manufacturer produced the specified quantity of TVs or DVD players, that was it. No continuity from one production run to another. Many of those outsource plants were fly-by-night operations that ramped up for large production runs, and then promptly dismantled the assembly line once they completed the run. (I once read that after the price points fell through the floor back in 2003, over 100 Chinese DVD player plants closed up shop) Apex never even issued service manuals, so even if somebody wanted to repair an Apex product, the repair shops had no schematics or parts lists to go off of.

Apex's former CEO is in a Chinese jail because of fraud and nonpayment to one of his many outsource vendors.

Vizio operates very similarly in that they contract for one-off production runs and might use a completely different design and manufacturer from one year's model to the next. Vizio didn't hire anyone to setup authorized repair centers or even make spare parts available on their TVs until July 2007 (which is also when they lost their lead in HDTV sales), and those parts inventories only covered their most recent models. Until Vizio hired somebody to handle the repairs and spare parts distribution, their warranty service was pretty much identical to Apex's coverage -- ship the TV back to the company on your own dime, and if it cannot be repaired, a refurb gets shipped to you (again, you pay the shipping charges).

Polaroid, Westinghouse, and even Best Buy's in-house Insignia brand are all similar in that they too are off-brand TVs with no spare parts distribution.

This is quite different from Samsung or Panasonic's business model, given that both companies manufacture most of the major components in their TVs, and make spare parts readily available for TV models dating back many years. Other companies like Sony and Toshiba rely a little more on outsourcing major components, but they still take the steps to make sure that customers have easy access to service and parts.