While the Disney Cakes & Sweets cake decorating partwork continues to sell well for us, the bigger benefit is that it part of a broader Disney opportunity for us. We have Disney products from four other suppliers and this enables us to tell a bigger Disney story.
It falls on us as retailers to source branded products with which we can tell a story and thereby achieve more from products which, on their own, may not have sold so well.
Brands like Disney licence their products to suppliers who can extend the reach of their brands. This is why we see several suppliers of licenced brand products. Put in the work to connect the dots and it pays off through a better retail story.
The Disney brand is back in right now and almost anything can sell from a magazine to a gift costing well over $100.
Mark, I am in city area when most of my customers are office worker and student. Will this “Disney plush” work?
TT I expect it would if displayed as a strong and consistent story.
The following story is typical of my 10 year experience with Partworks and an indictment on a system that is design to fail.
I have 2 firm sales for Disney Cakes & Sweets and have had since commencement. Never had any returns except in the early days when I received more than 2.
The purchaser is well known to me, (buying for his wife & daughter) so I warned him from the outset that it was always my experience that there will be trouble at some stage with supply.
I also warned him of my policy due to years of poor experience and frustration that I would not follow-up when my firm sale, no returns allocation was eventually cut/reduced. I explained to him at some length of the on-going trouble I had experienced in trying to get back-orders for series over the past years and at how upset some customers had become with me because of the inability of suppliers to honour supply or get back orders. I also informed him that all the frustration would be his and none of it mine.
I then asked him if he wanted to commence getting the part series, answer yes.
So there we were trundling along until Part #21 when my supply was cut to 1 copy. Despite warning him I wouldn’t follow-up, I went back to Network and asked for supply allocations to be restored to 2 copies because they were a firm sale. Supply of 2 was restored in time for Part #23. But of course and not totally unexpected, but never-the-less a little surprisingly, my #24 supply has again been reduced to 1 copy. When I went into allocations to put it back to 2 copies, I couldn’t make the change because the allocation was still 2. There you go – prophecy fulfilled.
I know he won’t complain because of my warning at the start.
I realise some may well be horrified at my approach here. I would say to them how long do we keep banging our heads against a brick wall before realising it hurts and the most sensible and effective way to stop the pain is to simply stop banging it………….
I don’t view it as giving up, rather, it’s recognition of a failed system that WILL NOT CHANGE and introduction of a work-around by a frustrated link in the chain.
Happy for him he wasn’t building a ship!
Dennis Robertson
Dennis
Stupid thing is I had 2 customers for Disney cakes & sweets and one stopped about 2months ago yet I’m still receiving 2 and returning 1. I would of gone online and changed my supply except past experience tells me I wont be allowed as my average sales are 2 and I can’t set supply to less than my average sales. So I take the easy option and just keep returning 1 till network catch up and sort it out.
In the meantime even though network have the data to make an informed decision what they decide to do is drop your allocation to 1 and keep mine at 2. You really have to wonder whats actually happening at network,because it isn’t good. End result your missing partworks are sitting in my returns, sorry about that.
Haha, “stupid thing” is spot on Steve. I’m kind of philosophical about it all these days.
You put stories up in public forums in the hope that someone will take notice. Sometimes they do. This one is probably too hard to fix.
Interesting that your numbers stayed the same, which begs the question of how the selection process is driven whenever distributors find themselves with insufficient stock from the supplier.
Unlikely it’s driven by some sort of software algorithm that evens things out across the board. Clearly not based on sales/returns…… Who knows.
I’m sure that even though it happens to others, the story is just small potatoes in the overall scheme of things.
I know there have been all sorts of tiny improvements in the magazine distribution model over the years, but the big one (a game changer for many) that has never been improved upon is, conversely to this story, gross oversupply.
Even the latest crop of political (so-called) leaders have to wit to speak of the need for improved productivity, but no-one or group in my time has been able pin the distributors down where they can see the massive waste of time and effort (by thousands of Newsagents) associated with gross oversupply and choose to, or be compelled, to act accordingly.
Hopefully Marks survey in another thread will have some sort of a positive impact.
Dennis Robertson