I've searched and searched and come up with nothing. How are you guys finding these?

"funding" or "finding"?

Try using "rio car mp3"

Works for me...

How are you searching? Then I'll know how to list. :)

Bruno

There is one for sale now. Search under "Empeg"

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1317582304

They're disappearing pretty quick, so they tend to go into the "completed auctions" category within hours of being posted (people are using "Buy it Now") You can search completed items from the advanced search screen.

I wonder what the legalities are of eBay sellers copying marketing text and graphics wholesale. Seems very cheeky to me!

Rob

hehehe call up the lawyers and sue them!

First I am not one of the ones selling these players on e-bay.

Why would the company care since it moves more product? It is thinking like this that causes sales to die on products. It seems everybody on e-bay uses the text from web sites and graphics. I am sure IBM does not care if somebody uses a graphic from their site showing a picture of a hard drive. It promotes their product.

It is really sad to see such a high quality MP3 player go out but the way that EMPEG/RIO have handled sales on the player, I am not surprised.

As a reseller of mp3 products (www.funmp3players.com) I wanted to carry the empeg in my online store. Forbes magazine even did an article on mp3 players in which they interviewed me and I told them the Rio Car was the best mp3 player on the planet

(see http://www.funmp3players.com/temp/forbes.jpg)

When I contacted EMPEG/RIO about reselling the product, I was told that it would only be available off their web site. This was a huge mistake not allowing resellers to sell a product, not very many people are going to find out about it and sales are going to suffer. I understand at first when demand was high and they were not able to produce them fast enough (back when people had to take a number and wait months to get one) but why did they not allow resellers to try and sell them when they had hundreds of units in stock?

I wished that I could have sold the product off my web site but now it looks like nobody will be selling them.

If you talked to empeg (i.e. a long time ago) then we had no margin for resellers. Our own margin was probably less that you would expect to take.

Rio, on the other hand, have sold the product through a number of resellers. It was even listed on Amazon albeit at the original SRP. Most notably, Car Toys carried the product on their web site and in most of their stores. Deals with several other high street retailers were underway.

Nobody will be selling the player now as it was discontinued in September. We are moving into licencing in order to concentrate on development and let the big brands worry about distribution.

Rob

hmm, so we might see empeg clones in the future?

Not in its current form.

Indeed, the current player design hasn't changed much in two years. We're working on some even more cool stuff now (not that the current player isn't already light years ahead of most other products).

Rob

Rob....so what you're saying is that Rio (Sonic Blue, or whatever you want to call it) is coming out for a replacement for the Rio Car (Empeg)?

Very interesting!
Wes

Not at all - we have no plans to release another Rio car product.

That doesn't mean we're not busy developing new automotive products and pursuing licencing deals.

Rob

there are TONS on ebay, wierd.

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&ht=1&SortProperty=MetaEndSort&query=empeg

sad

the vultures got in there quick