It is great to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer partwork series launch in newsagencies. The popular TV show targets a demographic we like. Early indications are that sales will be good. We certainly have people requesting future copies be put away – this is part of the unique service newsagents offer. Our putaway service is a reason we have partworks and other retailers don’t. Overseas, partworks are sold in supermarkets. Australian newsagents are fortunate to have the opportunity.
Usually, when I write about partworks, people comment publicly or privately to me about the unreliability of supply and other challenges associoated with them. For some time I was a vocal critic of partworks. I took up an invitation to look behind the problems and develop something which works for my business. Three years on it works a treat. Supply is good. In return I provide accurate sales data. Occasionally there are bumps but these are fixed.
I will acknowledge that I am lucky to have access to the people who can fix problems and therefore don;t have to deal with call centres. I have put it to stakeholders – publishers, importers and distributors – that a thorough review of the partworks supply model could drive excellent sales growth. From a newsagent’s perspective, it all comes down to supply consistency through the entire series. This can be easily fixed.
A a longtime fan of the series, I know for a fact that this item is going to hopefully be a top seller.
The only issue would be, the fact that the series ended in 2003, so its been long over for 5 years, long enough time for people to buy the series in a box set.
But diehard fans like myself, will want this pack because they don’t yet have it in their collection.
Unreliability killed a strong section of our magazine sales with part series. In the end we had irate customers who had 90% of a collection or even worse of a model built and could not complete the series. We started giving out the number to the state sales manager who offered one customer a full refund for a boat model that was almost complete. The customer rightfully argued that it was not just the cost of the part series but the time put into building the model to 90% completion. Magicly the missing parts were found and supplied direct to the customer. We had these missing issues on back order for some 6 months and had no success contacting the supplier either through the local authirsed news agnt or directly.
We would probably support part series if the distributors got serious about proper supply but refuse to set ourselves up for a situation where we know we will dissapoint customers.
If they can guarantee supply we will reconsider.
I have an on-going problem with getting Part 11 of Buffy the vampire slayer. The original issue that came out was for DVD region 2 (Oz is region 4).
I returned that and, over the last few months, have received
another 6 copies from 6 different backorders. All region 2 and unplayable.
Never mind that I emphasized to the G & G customer service that someone should go down to the warehouse and dispose of the wrong region dvds. They keep sending the wrong dvd over and over again!
Today, i have spoken to customer service again, but, to be honest, I have lost faith in the system.
I would love to hear from other retailers with similar problems.
Mark L sorry to say it but you got it all wrong you cannot have a sentence with G&G and customer service in it as they just don’t go together . back on subject yeah i had the same problem but eventually the correct one turned up . i had more problems with the classoc british drama part works