Cover Story: Rescue Team

This isn’t to say Conney is immune to challenges. In addition to the economy, sourcing products and managing suppliers have proven difficult. In particular, many of the products Conney sells shifted rapidly last year from being very inflationary to deflationary.

“The earth is shifting underneath our feet, so we have to be very vigilant,” Wessner notes. “Every time we replenish a product, we must buy at the right level as opposed to being artificially high. We’ve seen some pricing changes of product that are different by 25 percent from August to now. That’s a lot of change in a very short period of time. Being able to get your arms around all the products and suppliers to make sure you’ve got the deal for today is a big challenge for anybody.”