Partwork Precious Rocks, Gems & Minerals was reissued in the UK in January as In Publishing reported recently. With the last go round finishing quite recently I can understand Aussie newsagents are angry at reissue here so soon.
There are space issues with many additional demands on space already confronting newsagents and challenging our focus.
The other issue is returns. I’d urge newsagents who have received excessive stock to demand the publisher fund freighting returns. It’s not your problem.
We should have been given the opportunity to opt in on this.
Did not even get unpacked. Re-labelled and returned with Tuesday mornings truck.
Problem with this crap is, its not worth sending back it cost more to send back than the credits are worth .
Claim it but don’t send it back, simply
Thats what we do Rick. Just got another 20 part 1 after selling not a single one last time. problem is it still means a trip to the tip so you’re out of pocket no matter what
Hold onto them just incase you get an audit .
Don’t you wish you could order what you want and be certain that is what they would send you?
Yep we tried that with sweet things, supposedly set at 20, still res 50+ issue one and then 38 issue two, no money in it for NDC if we set our own allocations. My policy now is to claim early returns on partworks and dump the stock.
early return and sell the gold
Sent all ours back, had to backorder Disney Cakes yet again, I have 3 customers and only ever get 2. Lost track of how many times I have complained. Just had a look and we have 18 backorders for this title. As of now we will no longer support partworks due to very poor supply. I have better things to do then chase backorders every week. They will all be sent back
Rocks went back – I have 11 customers for watches – I get 1
We have been thinking long and hard about partworks because of all the reasons listed above and in many other posts. On 1st February this year I penned a policy for our store. It goes like this. Sell the first issue. All the rest go back. We keep the second issue around for a week or so before we send them back. We expect to lose sales but this new policy will eventually yield us savings in time and stress. We dont need the problems.
Depends on the partworks involved, the latest reincarnation of precious stones did not even make the shelf, claimed and dumped. If it looks good I will support it, but if I’m oversupplied, I claim the excess and then dump the stock, irrespective of the issue number.
I must be a slow learner. While I’m worrying about how to get boxes of these bloody things back to the distributor without being too out of pocket everyone else seems to be dumping them at the tip.
Rick don’t tell us where you are or you might end up in trouble. I don’t advocate dumping the product but it is galling to have to pay to return it when we didn’t request (or want) it in the first place.
Once again, I reiterate, DO NOT EVER ALLOW NO EARLY RETURNS or there won’t be any newsagents left to early return them.
Newsagents will not survive the cashflow issues that would arise from NO EARLY RETURNS.
It is imperative that the distributors understand this and I think it would be safe to say that it would be “unconscionable conduct” should they ever try to implement this.
How can we not be allowed to return product that was never requested in the first place????
We have decided to no longer provide putaways for any new partwork releases and now encourage our customers to subscribe directly, so i guess the publishers have won.
We have 56 backorders for Disney, 67 for Red Bull and 47 for Disney Cakes – amongst many others, and they just soak up too much time to make them worth persevering with, and make us look inefficient in our customers eyes. Now we just put up what we get and return them when the next issue comes in, and definitely no re-ordering.
Happy to do putaways. They work a treat.
If I get in trouble I will take them on, either legally or thru the accc, and publicly , I have a feeling they would shy away from the spotlight on their supply practices.
Mark, how can you seem to get supply of putaways ? Looks like the mag companies look after city stores and not give a #$%^ about country areas
Murray, you’re not alone. We’re in city, and can never get enough of most partworks to fill orders. Have asked direct many times and the reply is always “your allocation has been adjusted and you should get them next week”.
We never get them.
Continually have irate customers over this.
Murray I am noisy about it. I don;t think location has anything to do with it. There are a couple of series I cannot get stock for but most are okay.
if anyone has issue 1 (one person said they had 20 copies), i would like to purchase it. it is impossible to get from the distributors.
thanks
I have heaps, on hols atm til the weekend tho, email me at tully@newsxpress.com.au