Bullseye Glass

Wow, we sure didn't expect our little post about Bullseye to cause such waves as it did.

Let's recap:

Bulleye's only distributor in Canada announced last week that they will no longer carry Bullseye Glass. 

That means no more catspaw opals, no more streakies, no fracture/streamers, and most importantly, no more fusible glass. 

All we did was post that fact on our blog.

A couple of days later, Bullseye issued the statement copied below:

"To our friends and customers in Canada,
We recently learned that a glass distributor in the Toronto area has announced that they are no longer carrying Bullseye Glass products. That’s too bad and we’re sorry to see them go. Fortunately, Bullseye Glass continues to be readily available across Canada.
We recommend these three suppliers who welcome your business:"

They then list off the three businesses.

So is Bullseye still 'readily available across Canada'?
We did some asking around. 

Not really.

Oh, sure if you want just the rudimentary stuff like common colours of sheet glass, nothing too out of the ordinary. but need some of the less popular stuff? 

Not likely.

You see, Bullseye is sort of right, but they are not really being totally forthright.

It seems that yes, you can get some of their product according to Bullseye at these three places that they promote as legitimate suppliers (which leads me to ask why you would want to be a reseller of Bullseye when Bullseye would rather sell to your customers themselves instead of you, I don't know, but I digress).

But hey wait a minute. 

Are these guys really full-line suppliers? Is Bullseye really 'readily available'?

Not really.

Sure they carry some Bullseye. Heck they might even special order all the stuff they don't carry if you're willing to wait a month or two. What these suppliers really are is one dealer and two teaching centres and not full line suppliers and therefore carry only a portion of the Bullseye line (something we know all too well having been a dealer for over a decade). No dealer could afford to carry every item Bullseye makes. That's actually the responsibility of the full-line distributors. And that's ok, because while distributors have higher buying requirements to assure a good support base of supplies, they also get much better pricing to compensate this. But that's how and why we used to be able to get everything Bullseye produced so readily.
But now, we no longer have the benefit of a full line distributor as Bullseye neglects to mention. 

But Bullseye seems to think that's ok, not to worry, there are three other sources to buy from. So maybe we should look at those three suppliers then.

Two of the three are what Bullseye calls 'Bullseye Kiln-Glass Resource Center Preferred Partner'. This means that these shops were given a Bullseye dealership along with some preferred pricing.

But, get this- they are not allowed to carry any other glass than Bullseye. 

No Spectrum Sys96. No Uroboros fusible glass. I know, hard to believe, and these businesses are owned by what I thought were entrepreneurs.

What if you want some Sys96? You got to go somewhere else. Is that right? How does that help the market when a supplier forcefully limits free choice?

So, sorry Bullseye, we still say that Bullseye Glass is not 'readily available across Canada'.

Think we will have a wee dram of some Oban Scotch and commiserate that fact...