Tomatoes....

I've having a quick lunch at Subway yesterday and can't help but hear a lady in the line giving the help a hard time because of the tomatoes.

She said "You shouldn't have the end pieces of tomatoes in there, they should all be thrown out and only the centers used, with the green core cut out". When the employee didn't say anything, she re-doubled her attack with "Did you hear what I said? Those parts of the tomatoes shouldn't be in there!".

I thought to myself, "Lady, you're talking to the sandwich maker who is not about to start tossing out tomato pieces on your say-so. You either want to take it up with the owner of the franchise, Subway Corporate, or make your own lunch at home". And I seriously doubt that Subway is going to effectively dispose of 10 % of each tomato because you don't like the ends. Good luck with that.

I get that same thing often in the furniture business. Just last week a woman on the phone gave me the devil because she can't click on a photo on Taylor King's website and see a frame 'painted' with all the different fabric options and demanded to know why? She also said that Taylor King should have a database of where every frame is at every dealer so customers can go sit on the style number they like. After explaining to her that both those would be nice to have, but are very costly to implement, she didn't want to take that for an answer and kept pressing her argument, as if I could do something about it ! Finally I had to terminate the phone call with 'Sorry I can't help you, good luck in your search". Now i'll probably get dinged again on Yelp or Google Reviews....lol

That happens a lot. I get suggestions all the time on what my suppliers and transport companies being used should do. And the fact of the matter the ONLY thing I can control is things that occur in my store, everything else is something I have no influence with as to how other companies run their businesses. I get suggestions all the time to photograph everything in my store and keep it updated weekly, and also to scan and post the MSRP price lists for each of my suppliers. While it would be nice to do so, who has the time to do all that? It would be hundreds of hours of work to stay on top of it, and the profit margin isn't there to hire people to do that.

I've been trying for over 5 years to get my suppliers to have web access for dealers just so we can check cover stocks on-line to see if they are in-house, dropped or backordered. You would think that would be pretty simple since all suppliers have it in their customer service computers already, and we would just need an internet portal to their cover inventory....yet when i mention that to CEO's of these companies you'd think I'd asked them for something magical to occur. The dealers still have to pick up the phone and call to check on covers, and they aren't open weekends.

Moral of the story? Try not to sweat the tomatoes. Sometimes things just are the way they are.

Perhaps best not taken up with you, but she has a point.

The websites by Sherill, Drexel Heritage, etc that provide this feature really help the customer visualize what they might be getting. All the makers should adopt this technology. When they can afford it, I guess you'd say. But it should be considered as an investment that should help promote business. In competition with those others that provide it.

She's right about the other point too. There's no way to find a sofa whose specs might interest you.

And of course you are also right, if you say that this is not your department. But actually these features would most help a dealer who does a lot of distance business.

But you've repeatedly pointed out that the dealers are the customers of these companies, not us. If we can't suggest it to the companies (because we are not their customer ), and we can't suggest it to the dealers, then who can we suggest it to?

Silly me. I thought this was going to be about tomatoes. I was all set to talk about the heirloom tomatoes that we grow.

Duane's version of "DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF" or "YOU CAN NOT ALWAYS PICK YOUR WAR, BUT YOU CAN PICK YOU BATTLES"

These companies are hard to move, I think if it as turning an aircraft carrier whereas little operations like my stores are speedboats. It took me nearly three years of constant nagging the owners of Hancock & Moore to list their dealers on their website and the leather samples. They objected long and hard about it for the following reasons:

Listing Dealers by area: Encourages cross shopping of price

Showing available leathers: Photographs will not be like the real hide, and customers who order based on the photos will object to what they actually receive and complain.

I finally convinced them that by listing their dealers by region, they are helping their end user customer find the stores in their area to see their product line. Otherwise how would the retail customer know where to go see it? Yellow Pages? No one uses Yellow Pages anymore. And on the leather sample colors, I assured them that no one is going to order off those photos, that that is a preliminary to ordering sample swatches, to help retail customers narrow their choices. When they finally agreed, they found it didn't cause chaos in the least, and was beneficial.

But those were inexpensive things to do and required minimal capitalization costs. To get into the more expensive things like painting a cover on each piece is a real commit in funding. The furniture companies are not all that healthy, money-wise. 2007/08/09 nearly wrecked them all, and while they're not on life support, none of them are rolling in the dough so they are extremely reluctant to commit funds to new projects. Their focus is to keep enough business going so their employees are working and at the same time controlling costs to keep the prices down as best they can.

On a smaller scale - those of you that buy from me still get a hand-written receipt, don't you? I was considering going to a bar code /scan system but that's a $ 10,000 project that I can't justify. I'd love to have it, but I would have to raise my prices a little to cover it, and I'm not prepared to do that just yet - everyone (that's you - my customers) is still pretty price sensitive and no one is really feeling cash flush that I know of. Not yet.

Duane when ordering a sofa using COM do you call H&M to get the yardage if fabric has a large repeat. I see listed 22.5 yards listed but the fabric I am interested in has a 14 inch repeat.

I get the overarching point that industry participants don't feel they have the money now to make many discretionary investments. But just to beat this into the ground:

The difference is, the scan code receipt system has no revenue enhancement implications to help cost-justify it.

By contrast, the "painting a cover' utility is a marketing investment that should have attributable indirect revenue enhancement implications to the manufacturers, which should appropriately be factored into their decision about making that investment.

So when times are a little better, they might want to look into this.

But it can't hurt to give them a little "heads up" so they might even put it on their future consideration list, can it? Like must have been done at some point with the dealer lists and the leather samples.

Particularly since some of their competitors have already done it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MRSSQRDAWAY

Duane when ordering a sofa using COM do you call H&M to get the yardage if fabric has a large repeat. I see listed 22.5 yards listed but the fabric I am interested in has a 14 inch repeat.

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There are relatively common conversion charts out there on the web, here's one:

http://www.carrscorner.com/repeatadjustment.php