Do Business Well

Purchase incidence of furniture was the same in 2005 (41 percent) as in 2006. The purchase of furniture can range from inexpensive occasional tables and ready-to-assemble and unfinished furniture to major furniture acquisitions that are often bought on credit and paid for over time.

Furniture Industry Snapshot

Personal consumption of furniture, including mattresses and box springs, reached $69.8 billion in 2002, up 3.2 percent over 2000 levels of $67.6 billion. Continue Reading »

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How do you find reps? Call the buyers you wish to sell. Tell them you’re planning to introduce a new line into their area, and you wonder whom they might recommend as a rep. I have never had any problem getting one or more suggestions from every call.

After you’ve amassed a list of potential candidates, call each one and do a brief telephone interview. Give him some background on your company and product to see if he’s interested. Determine if he has any conflicting lines (it’s usually considered a conflict of interest for a rep to carry the same items from two factories). Continue Reading »

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Many companies find that after their first few years they hit a sales plateau. Up to a certain volume, business comes easy. Then there comes a time when it seems as if the next sales dollar is very elusive. Ironically, the sales ceiling usually hits just at the point where profits start.

A variation of this dilemma is the seasonal sales phenomenon. I know of one motorcycle parts distributor who made huge profits eight months out of the year, only to lose almost all of it in the winter months. Continue Reading »

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`Place’ (Convenience in the 4- Cs) means the elements of the marketing mix that marketers use to enable customers to access the benefits of a product or service. Traditionally, this has meant ‘channels of distribution‘ through (e.g.) various wholesaler and retailer combinations. Viewing from the ‘convenience for the customer‘ (4-Cs) perspective gives a more customer-orientated focus. This is a vital decision area for the e-Business for three reasons. First, relatively small local companies can widen their market and even export (e.g. Botham (www.Botham.co.uk), to be described further in Chapter 9). Second, many e- Businesses aim to gain competitive advantage by using e-Systems to de-layer the distribution chain. For example, Dell (www.dell.co.uk) supplies customers directly, rather than through distributors, wholesalers or retailers. Third, distribution is an area where some e-Businesses have been severely criticized for failing to deliver customer service (see Chapter 9 for more details).

Place elements of the marketing mix have been changing rapidly over recent decades, and these changes impact in many ways on the marketing operations of the e-Business. First, the growth of retailer power has involved major retailers taking more control of their supply chains. The involvement of wholesalers has been reduced, tending to give way to contract logistics (under retailer control). At the same time, supply chains have become more efficient, with computer network links between suppliers and retailers — many still based on EDI. Predating the Internet, EDI is based on privately owned third-party computer networks. Stock levels have been reduced using techniques such as JIT and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Control of the physical distribution, ordering, invoicing and payment systems, particularly for major retailers, is often still carried out using EDI networks such as Tradanet (www.gegxs.com/gxs/ products/product/traser). Increasingly, though, retailers such as Tesco are allowing Internet access to their suppliers for real-time electronic point-of-sale (EPOS) data. Trusted supplier partners can thus respond more quickly to changes in customer demand. Continue Reading »

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