If your newsagency is oversupplied with non-circulation stock it’s your fault. You set the rules by which your supplier trades with you and if you don’t you should.
I was in a newsagency yesterday that is over-stocked in a stationery category. In addition to full shelves, they have more stock in the storeroom. Several suppliers supply this business with reps doing the orders – clearly not based on sales.
The newsagent blames the reps.
I blame the newsagent.
It’s your money being spent, put in place controls that set how supplier representatives spend it.
Too often I find ever-stocked newsagencies where the owner or staff blame the suppliers. Only rarely would I agree the supplier is responsible. You need to put the needs of your business ahead of friendships. Use your computer system and only order what is selling. An amazing deal for bulk quantities of an item may not be a good deal if the stock takes too long to sell.
Having too much stock to display, more than you would need for as long as it might take to get extra stock is tying up capital and straining the business. I am surprised some newsagents don’t get this.
Use your supplier as the warehouse and not your back room.
Very frustrating.
We have suffered by being sucked into deals that overload us with stock in the past but now strictly use our software to set min/max rules and order accordingly. Currently I am checking recent (3 months) sales history before processing orders to update ordering levels. Reps show us new stock but only order what we request.
Brendan:
Are you checking each SKU for ordering history and adjust each SKU for ordering level?
How many SKUs can you review per day?
Are you check personally or assign a staff member to this task?
How do you determine the ordering level if one SKU has special sale history, for example, 80% sales of this SKU had been purchased by one major customer. Do you factor the risk of losing this customer and put a lower ordering level on the SKU?
Do you based on the sales from normal trading period, and those from seasonal promotions to adjust the ordering level?