Merchandising

Professionally, Lynda Swann will never be another Eddie Smith. Then again, she won’t have to be. The support system her father fostered and nurtured during his 50-plus years running the women’s hosiery and apparel catalog National Wholesale Co. runs so seamlessly that Swann handles her role as president with relative ease.

Like many entrepreneurs who launched catalog businesses in bygone eras, the late Eddie Smith, whom I had the pleasure of knowing during the ’90s and early 2000s, stuck firmly to a number of ironclad principles during his 50-plus years at the helm of the National Wholesale catalog.

Of all the strategies for reducing costs in your catalog business, vendor compliance programs may be the most underdeveloped. A well thought out, formal vendor compliance policy can reduce warehousing and freight costs, speed up order processing, and lead directly to increased customer satisfaction. To achieve this, you must spell out your requirements and chargebacks for vendor noncompliance. Without a formal vendor compliance policy, the warehouse has no recourse but to absorb both direct and hidden costs for noncompliance. Without compliance, it’s impossible for multichannel merchants to implement advanced supply chain systems (ASNs), just-in-time inventory, source marking and ticketing, or radio frequency identification programs.

With 10.1 million people unemployed in the U.S., why buy from China? I recently Googled “catalog” and these sponsored links popped up: SkyMall online catalog Search hundreds of SkyMall products online. Official site. Shop now www.SkyMall.com/Gifts Newport News Runway-inspired fashions for less. Shop our 2008 styles and trends. www.Newport-News.com Signals Mail Order Catalog Fun & Great Gifts for All Occasions Your One-Stop Holiday Gift Store www.signals.com Crate & Barrel Furniture Find Contemporary Furniture for Your Home Online at Crate & Barrel! www.CrateandBarrel.com — November 11, 2008 Late last summer I ordered two pair of chino trousers

A recent visit to a major B-to-B cataloger (sales in excess of $100M) proved to be quite a revelation for me. During the course of my visit, it was revealed that the company was struggling to maintain its fill rate. When I asked what its fill rate was, the answer was shocking — below 80 percent! It’s been almost two decades since I’ve heard a number that low.
Once again, this example reinforced for me how important it is to make sure the basics are right in our businesses. With such a low fill rate, I suggested this company slow down on all other

Marc Joseph, president of Dollar Days International (www.dollardays.com), whose company’s Web site offers wholesale and closeout products to multichannel merchants, outlined several ways that small and midsize merchants can compete against the big-box retailers, particularly when dealing with product vendors, at the recent Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago. Here are some of his takeaway tips from the session. 1. On dealing with vendors: * deal/negotiate with the right people; * don’t give a bottom-line price right away; give yourself some negotiating room, he said; * don’t be afraid to say no; and * be honest and ethical. 2. On buying product:

As one cataloger I recently interviewed called it, “terminal sameness” is the phenomenon of all catalogs blending together to look the same, particularly when it comes to product offerings. At the recent ACCM conference, a panel of catalogers led a session to help their peers break out of the mold with their merchandise assortments and avoid the “me too” syndrome. The panelists, Emily Harris, product manager of the spa and massage division of the Scrip Cos., parent firm of the Lotus Touch catalog; Jane Schmotzer, director of product development for the Christian Tools of Affirmation catalog; and Geoff van Sonsbeeck, co-founder and owner

When reviewing a software vendor’s proposal, evaluate the services as well as the training that the vendor offers. Some vendors underbid the training and services; watch out, as that will cost you more than you budgeted. Get in writing the number of days each training session will take and for how many people, then do the same for project management. Talk with other companies that have converted to find out what their experiences have been like. Compare this against how much time you really feel is necessary to properly implement the system. Learn much more at the upcoming two-day interactive workshop, Evaluating, Selecting and

During a session I led at last week’s National Conference on Operations & Fulfillment in Orlando, Fla., I identified several critical mistakes businesses make in their systems selection processes, regardless of the type of system. These include distributed control systems, order management systems (OMS), warehouse management systems (WMS), e-commerce or similar ones. Among the mistakes I noted were the following: * not having the right project team in place; * failing to develop detailed business requirements; and * limiting the search to a preselected number of vendors, based on the premise that “someone that somebody knows” said “this is the system you should get.”

It’s a problem as fundamental as supply and demand: When supply fails to meet demand, you have to back-order. When supply exceeds demand, you have overstock. When it all works according to plan, pinch yourself; you may be dreaming. Or, you may be one of the smart multichannel marketers who bucks business as usual to adopt a more realistic approach to the planning and purchasing of product. An approach called “continuous inventory” yields several benefits: • more predictable demand streams; • more accurate inventory levels; • special vendor pricing; • optimized shipping; and • improved customer experiences. The best part about continuous inventory