Oct 14, 2009

[Philippines] CD-R King

CD-R King


It's interesting to note how stores can start from seemingly useless kiosks in the middle of the mall and end up being major franchises or household brand names some day. It doesn't happen for everyone but it does in fact happen here and there and it's always a treat to see this occur.

There's no surefire way for anyone to determine if a business will succeed or fail, but then it is worth a shot if you really believe in your product or the service you're out to sell. This is probably why we continue to see people selling those bamboo flutes all these years or the never ending run of T-shirts with spoofs of major logos and taglines. They seem like niche businesses, but against all odds they still survive through the years.

CD-R King is a brand name that's pretty much well known to tech fiends throughout the Philippines. I can remember how many years ago it seemed to be just another kiosk selling really cheap CDs and CDRWs as people were just starting to get into backing up their data to discs or at the very least creating their own "mix CDs" to be played in their cars or their portable CD players. Yes, this was certainly a period before the iPod, haha. I could be wrong in my memory in terms of the precise time period, but the general concept of how they started is pretty much there.

Now they carry a heck of a lot more than just discs with different designs for data storage and back-up. Now they seem to have a had in pretty much every single tech accessory or peripheral you can think of. They carry their own brand of MP3 players now along with external hard drives, laptop cooling fans, USB hubs and even their own dance pads for those into those kids of console games. It's practically insane just how many different gadgets they carry and these stores are now pretty much a staple of every major shopping mall in the country.

They're certainly living up to their Vision & Mission about trying to bring media and technology to everyone at affordable prices and frankly the quality of their items is more than decent considering the price.

Supposedly they claim the reason for their affordability lies in not spending on advertising and dressing up their clerks and just focusing on negotiating bulk purhcase deals directly from the factories and primary supplies and passing on the savings to their consumers. It's a pretty practical model (or some would say a very Chinese one) but it's obviously working given how many branches exist and yet there doesn't seem to be an apparent way one can sign up for franchising for this chain. Sheer genius.

Of course, you get what you pay for and the one major drawback of the store is the actual quality of service you get. There's no consistency across branches and many times it gets very tedious to even attempt to purchase anything when there are too many people in the store. But then the deals may just be worth the wait - or you can better time your visits to low-volume periods.

So as far as one-stop media & technology shops go, CD-R King is pretty tops. This isn't quite a formal review but if it were, they'd certainly get a 5 out of 5.


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2 comments:

  1. CDR King is growing fast with new varied products which customers love. With new electronic cameras, larger drives for mp4, computer phones, and now even batteries for nokia cell phones (now mostly out of stock but still shown in the online catalog) it shows there is a huge demand for these products at reasonable prices! Keep up the great product line expansion and great prices. And the website is excellent but ordering online should be provided! And the instant chats with technicians are good but the inventory and stock availability is so old fashioned for a modern tech selling firm like CDRKING. And the waiting lines can be hours and the check out is so tedious.
    http://cdrkingph.blogspot.com/

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  2. Like you said its hard to get service their, i have walked out many time waiting in "line" for my number to be called... and some of the things there are not worth your money such as keyboards etc... i bought a keyboard their and the keys started messing up in less than a month... so i went an bought a USED dell keyboard from Supply Surplus and its still working 3 months later. So be careful what you buy here as their warranty / replacement policy sux... no re-funds on anything... I did buy a cheap 250 PHP external harddrive case and its working good so far.. we will see how that goes. But in reality i would rather spend more money money somewhere else and get a warranty than by something cheap-o and have it break in a month... shop at your own risk.

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