We sold out of That’s Life by yesterday morning and debated whether to purchase more copies from the Coles nearby where they are loaded up. I decided against purchasing from Coles because of the impact it would have on our sales data – who wants the XchangeIT police on your back for bad data? What do you do in this situation?
could you sell the Coles ones and enter under MAGAZINES instead of scanning?
Mark, I’m next to a Coles supermarket too
but nothing would encourage me to purchase at retail from them.
Why would you increase their sales and skew your own?
I find it a real NO NO.
One of my sons used to be a manager at Officeworks and he would often tell me about specials and tell me to send dad to buy some but I always refused for the above reasons.
I must admit it used to hurt sometimes when they were selling reflex paper at $5.99 ream and I was buying it at around
$7.50 from Ancol but I always supported our co-operative (naïve perhaps) and I never supported Coles/officeworks.
June, we often purchase soft drinks from our local Woolworths.. Their prices are nearly alway cheaper than going direct. We don’t qualify for reduced rates from Coke to our small volumes. I have also been know to purchase a loss leader from other large retailers.. we are re-sellers afterall. I don’t see it as proping up the bigger guys.. since most of them already have volume share.. it’s more about having what my customer wants at the a price they are comfortable with..
I was told by the Coke Rep several years ago in our Milk Bar that they would much prefer to deliver 10 pallets of product to one point, rather than 1 or 2 products to 10 points. They happily accepted that smaller business would buy from the supermarkets.
Makes perfect business sense on their part and in my eyes by taking advantage of the ‘below our cost’ items we were in front.
I was often at C or WW after we closed to restock for the next few days.
I’m not too proud to make a few bucks. 🙂
If our stock went missing we would purchase copies for home delivery and putaways only, but always from another newsagent rather than the supermarket.
we tried buying extras from another newsagency but got growled at by the cranky old woman cause they have to order stock, so now we just go to the supermarket and it’s much better.
Can currently get NW, WDay, OK and Zoo half price at Coles Express. Often 7-11 stores have similar deals. I’ve given up ordering extras of anything from Gotch as our success rate has fallen below 10%. Was also told recently when trying to order extra Women’s Health that there’s stock in WA. It’ll take 3 weeks to get to you. I’m picturing them loading up the gordon and gotch camel with magazines and sending it across the nullabor. I love that bit in the gotch telephone recording when the chick says “we love giving you the best service possible”.
When Kate and William had their wedding, the Women’s Weekly did that thing where they cut our initial supply right down with the promise of more copies to come once all your customers have gone elsewhere. I cleaned out two local supermarkets because I love my customers.
The inability of publishers and distributors to respond to “hot ” issues, and to supply extras and missing copies in a timely fashion, is in my mind an even greater cost to this industry than oversupply.
Judy did you ask or just walk in and buy all there stock .
We got chatted by a manager at Coles for purchasing 10 Advertisers when we ran out early one day. Still got them but he wasn’t happy.
There was also a case last year in SA where a lady running a boarding house was refused service at Coles because the items in her trolley exceeded the amounts of a normal household. Evidently there are limits on the number of items able to be purchased instore.
PeterB yes I have had the manager of woollies have a look in my trolley to determin wether it was a “normal amount”while buying softdrinks , and when I sold smokes they refused to sell them to me . I just say I am going on a camping trip 🙂
A few years ago when I did sell cigarettes I would often buy them from the local Woolies if I ran out between deliveries. Whey they realized it was the local Newsagent buying them they promptly stopped serving me. Whilst I had no real problem with it there was quite a community stir when they applied the same principal to the local Lions Club wanting to buy supplies for one of their events.
I don’t understand the logic. A sale is a sale is a sale. Where is the loss to Woolies or Coles etc? It’s not like I’m going to on-sell it for a lesser price. So all I can put it down to is that either they don’t want to run out of stock whilst a competitor does has the stock making them look bad. Alternatively do they just want to ensure that a competitor that has run out stays out of stock making them look better. Perhaps it’s both.
Shauns, we didn’t just walk in and buy all their stock. The owner had told us we could buy a few copies, but the staff member was cranky at everyone and my husband is not going back again – ever!