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When my cousin and I began our new endeavor of opening up a chain of retail-clothing stores, we delegated all tasks evenly. My cousin’s job was to handle interior designing and store presentation as well as to take care of sales while my tasks were to handle all advertising, merchandise purchasing, and inventory distribution.
Throughout the years, the most difficult among all of my tasks was, undoubtedly, the lack of ability to properly service our stores with company inventory in a timely, orderly fashion. I would like to discuss this matter.
A network of chain stores must always function as one unit. This means that all of the stores in the network must be supplied with the same inventory and must also advertise the same sales and discounts in order to ensure that customers can take advantage of them no matter what their location is.
In order for this chain store unity to take place, our warehouse needed a service provider who would be able to package our inventory and ship the required amounts precisely at the right time.
This would be the most ideal set up for the business. All stores would be offering the same merchandise, sales, and discounts at the same time. However, creating such a set-up proved to be much more difficult than expected.
What normally took place was that our warehouse distribution functioned on a supply and demand basis. As the supply for a particular item went up, the warehouse would ship more merchandise. We were never able to get enough distribution power to ship our inventory out to all stores together, and therefore our stores were never in sync with each other.
This lead to numerous accusations of false advertising because corporate would advertise a sale or discount on certain items, while stores would not be able to provide for them because of lack of inventory.
When we finally found a pick and pack service that was ready to answer our calling, our sales began to soar sky high because no store has gone without being serviced on time, and our stores are able to function as one.
Bella C. Fletcher is a business developer with over twenty five years of experience in distribution services. For more information regarding the advantage of using pick and pack services in order to create a solid and unified business, view the Bergen Shippers website online. Bella is an SEO specialist working with SEO services company ClickResponse.
In order for any industry to exist it must have two basic things, a demand for a particular product and the capacity to supply that product. A company existing within an industry must be able to have both of those things in order to survive.
Even if a company has a wonderful product that is constantly demanded on the market, that does not guarantee the survival of the company. The company must have an efficient method in which to get the product to its customers. Failure to get the product to consumers in a prompt manner will cause the slow deterioration of company sales.
Many corporations in the US have realized this the hard way. Take for example, certain food product companies that depended on distribution companies to get their products to the various supermarkets throughout the nation. Very often, distribution companies had problems reaching certain areas and left those areas entirely without service.
It is indeed true that a company that does not have to worry about making sales to supermarkets only has to make its sales to its distributers and leave it at that, but every capitalist knows that business growth is equivalent to business survival, and a business that is not growing will not be able to survive in the long run. Therefore, it is always necessary to make sure that not only should every existing area be well serviced, but more newer territories should be opened up to expand the range of consumers.
Furthermore, these companies did not realize that their best advertisements are when their products are seen on the shelves. When products are no longer visible to the eye of the consumer, consumers loose interest in them. Therefore, distributors will lose interest in buying the products to begin with, because there will be a general lack of interest.
It is quite clear that the key to a successful business besides for making a good product is to use distributors that have the capacity to service every area and have outstretched arms throughout the nation to get their product everywhere. Another possibility, although costly, is to invest in a company owned distribution center.
This would be beneficial for numerous reasons. Firstly, shipping packages will be left to the discretion of the company itself, and if their is any matter that arises it is dealt with as an internal affair. Moreover, companies do not need to rely on other distributors and their deficiencies to service areas that may be problematic to service.
Of course, this would be an option available only for a company that could afford such a project, as it is quite a costly one. Until a company is big enough to handle that, a good distributor could take care of the project as well.
Bella C. Fletcher is a company professional who specializes in company packaging and distribution. For more information concerning the benefits of pick and pack services check out the Bergen Shippers website online. Bella is an SEO specialist working with SEO services company ClickResponse.

