Half our Take 5 supply was missing on Wednesday and Network Services was unable to correct this Thursday so we miss out. The magazine distribution model does not deal well with missed magazine deliveries, especially in odd delivery weeks like around Easter. We have customers who are frustrated. I am frustrated.
Every Take 5 sale lost as a result of this is an opportunity for a customer to try somewhere else. We estimate that we will lose between 40 and 50 sales as a result.
What i normally do when this happens is go into wollies and buy enough stock for each day just to keep the customers happy ,no money to be made but up here in north queens;land it is a dream to get extras or missing mags in the same week.
We do the same, actually had a good relationship with supermarket, whereby they would let me borrow, until our supply turned up as they never sold out. But then new manager came and said that we were stealing!! Funny how supermarkets never seem to miss deliveries. Gordon and Gotch have better service with missed deliveries. Network and NDD couldn’t care.
The difficulty this presents is the dmage to sales data. XchangeIT will show you selling more than you were supplied.
What if you arrive them from a different supplier? ie Woolies. Can you some how send info to XchangeIT, stating how much is from each supplier?
Unfortunately, not in the way XIT currently works. We shift stock between our stores and have the same problem.
Seriously! 2009 and XchangeIT can’t cater for multiple stores. The need for CLEAR, RELEVANT and USABLE data standards is long overdue. Suppliers, newsagents, marketing groups and software providers need to determine these TOGETHER so that the standards can meet the needs of all its users.
We create a different barcode sometimes, same as we do when we get books from GNS that are also supplied thru mag companies.