Out of Luck Part 2

So what does one do when the obscure gift item one had intended to purchase is not available through the web site, and will not be available before spring of next year? In years past one might have been forced to simply wait for the thing to become available; perhaps giving the recipient a nice card and a picture of the gift that they will almost certainly get before Easter, assuming that your mail delivery person doesn’t freak out and just throw an entire of truckload of mail under the foundation of their (the mail carrier’s) house (which apparently happens from time to time). Alternately, you might find some other mail-order product that would do, or perhaps even break down and venture into the violent chaos that any large shopping complex will have degenerated into during this joyous season. In the age of the Internet, however, you’ll probably just feed the name of the product into whatever you use as a browser program and go find another vendor for the same thing…

Needless to say, perhaps, a single search turned up literally dozens of other sources for the gift I was looking for. The first five sites were also out of stock, but the sixth one, Kult of Athena.com not only had the item I was looking for, they were offering it a better price than the original vendor was. Which was remarkably odd, in fact, because the original vendor is the parent company of the manufacturer that actually makes the item in question. That’s right, folks, the new vendor I found online not only had a better selection than the company that makes my merchandise, they also sell it for a better price. I suppose I can see how one of your customers might have more ready inventory of your product available than you do, particularly if you business is primarily wholesale, rather than retail, based. I just can’t fathom how they would also be able to undercut your price…

In the long run, however, this little foul-up is going to end up costing my original vendor a lot more than whatever the difference between the wholesale price was and what their retail price could have been, because the new vendor carries merchandise from at least a dozen other manufacturers, including a much greater range of product categories. Since I can get all of the original vendor’s products off the Kult of Athena site, as well as the offerings from a dozen other companies, all at better prices, the original vendor is not likely to ever get my business back, but the real selling point is the “in-stock” indicator on the KofA web pages. Not only do they indicate what’s in or out of stock, they’ve actually got three categories: in stock, on backorder (available within a week or so) and out of stock (30 or more days wait). They’ve also got product ratings that cover how heavy-duty specific items are, what the proper uses for them might be, and so on, but frankly, just not having to wonder if I can get what I want now (as opposed to having to wait for a month) would be enough to keep me coming back…

It struck me this week that there’s a lesson here, not just for people in the mail-order industry, but for all of us in management. We’ve all known that the Internet has changed the way we do business for ever; sales, marketing, customer service, point-of-purchase, even operational management will never be the same. Now it turns out that even your inventory control system (or lack of one) has become another place where the rubber meets the road, where you can move with the times or become as obsolete as the paper ledger you’re using to keep track of your stock. It doesn’t matter how you feel about these newfangled contraptions; you can either keep up with the industry standard – or get left behind…