Dahua Offering Direct End User Sales

How does one buy Dahua direct anyway? Make the check out to Dahua USA?

This is a good question, and not something that I can answer directly.

In our pre-show meeting, I asked our secret shopper to ask about buying direct and to note responses. My expectation was that manufacturers would deny this is possible (which they mostly did), and refuse to acknowledge that for many of them you can in fact buy their products direct through online retailers.

Dahua was the only company (aside from expected ones like Longse) that didn't deny any knowledge of online product availability and actually seemed to encourage the end-user to purchase direct.

I'm not sure if it really matters if Dahua meant direct as in "make the check out to us", or direct as in "yes, if you like our stuff you could get it at Amazon". The most notable part is that they appeared to support end-user direct purchases as long as they got the overall sale.

We only had one undercover shopper at ISC West, so it's also possible that this conversation was an outlier, due to an English barrier (though our shopper did not note any apparent communication barriers with Dahua as this with Longse), or something else.

Ha! That would be pretty low...

And then denying the support because they sold it pretending to be someone else...

"I can't imagine Dahua wants to drop ship one dome from China"

Point of information. Dahua now has an office and warehouse in California.

Remember the party:

Jon -

You raise good points, and I don't think it comes across as defensive.

Overall, this report is in the larger theme of Dahua seemingly struggling to figure out what to do in the US (eg: Dahua Declares Defeat, 'Embraces' Enemies, Dahua Admits Failed Channel Strategy).

ISC West is the biggest show in the US. It's not cheap to attend, and so you would think a manufacturer like Dahua could/would get people in the booth who could converse with their target customers (dealers and end-users).

According to our shopper, Dahua offered this, it didn't have to be coerced out of them. Our shopper was also not an industry person, so there was no bias for or against any particular manufacturer or channel strategy.

Dahua's strategy has seemed a little "build it and they will come" at times, as if just showing up and having a low-cost product is enough to get them in the game. I think (hope) they are realizing that they need a more coordinated and strategic approach.

• This could have been a Dahua rep going off script and trying grab a deal buy suggesting a buy-direct strategy (and most likely direct as in on Amazon or online, probably not direct-from-China).

• This could have been a language barrier, and they didn't really mean "you can buy direct" in any way that would be bad.

• This could have been exactly what it seemed like, and Dahua trying to take advantage of the fact that the end-user didn't have an integrator, and they didn't want an integrator to come along and steer the user to another product.

All of these seem bad/clumsy/detrimental to Dahua making a stronger presence in the US (which I would assume was a big part of their reason for attending ISC West).

I don't think there is a spin of this encounter that is just complete and utter misunderstanding of what Dahua said and the whole thing was a "non-story".