I just want to make some comments, and I guess this is the best place to put them. Having been interested and genuinely passionate about coffee for only around a year now, I've seen some wonderful senses of community, involvement, discussion, and passion. I have also seen some of the most horrendous business behaviour, and blatant marketing, discussion, and recommendation based on commercial interests. This is bad from both sides of the coin. Every business, whether it be a manufacture, retailer, or wholesaler, needs to make money, and it is entirely up to them to decide how to do that, within the law. Unfortunately, the whole Breville entering the "real" coffee market has forced a massive division between a lot of people. I have been personally been called an idiot, and been sworn at in PM on another forum for having an opinion on things which differ from others. I see people such as E61 who run completely different business models to people like Jetblack, as well as completely different to Talk Coffee etc. Not all of their business models are going to be favourable to manufacturers such as Breville (and, in this case, we will never know the full story from either side). I honestly believe that a big company with shareholders listed on the ASX cares very little as a company for anything other than large retailers on a similar level to them. They are there for one thing, and that is to make money. There does become that small issue when a person high up in that publicly listed company appears to be "doing favours" for particular vendors who are blatant friends in order to help them make their money. In the end, I think the unfortunately reality is that vendors, suppliers, manufacturers etc can never talk on the same level in a forum as general consumers (which was seen when one particular moderator on another forum was seen by many to have a conflict of interest). This is unfortunate, especially when we have such dedicated, passionate people like Matt wanting to share their love of coffee at the same time as turning a profit. When you have so many people who want to make money on one forum (not referring to this one), you are always going to end up with dedicated customers who want to support one vendor, as well as an "us and them" mentality of those who talk a lot, vs those who don't talk much. Having worked in some strand of IT for my whole working life, I've seen an industry essentially collapse. You cannot really go to a "computer store" these days and buy a laptop. What has happened is the big manufacturers have, as shareholder run companies, have cared for one thing, and that is raw numbers. Prices have gone down, and the ability to compete has become so cut throat, the barrier to entry in the market is high, and it's impossible to compete with the big generalist stores such as HN (the same ones that will be selling this coffee equipment). I believe we are seeing the same thing in a coffee industry, and I genuinely fear it. I fear that the humble coffee machine is becoming a commodity - a box that people just go get, rather than a piece of equipment people buy, expect to last, and will be happy to pay for service. We on forums are a minority unfortunately, and the way this will go in my opinion is not going to end well for specialty coffee retailers. But guess who it will end well for? Myer, Harvey Norman, Breville, Sunbeam - these big generalist companies that want to do one thing - move boxes and keep shareholders happy, just like it has for TV's, Computers, digital cameras. Do not think for one minute that these companies care about their consumers. They might hire the odd staff member who does who they hire for marketing purposes (some of whom will probably argue against these comments, because they genuinely do care about the project they've been a part of), but it's for one reason only, and that's the bottom line. I don't think seeing any manufacturer/vendor discussion in the public eye, whether favourable or unfavourable is a good thing for any consumer. It can only look bad from both sides for some people. I've gone off on a bit of a rant/tangent here, but I just had to put what was in my head on paper.
