SciGuy2":2taasjno said:
In general, if I don't like the posted prices in a store I leave. However, I have "discussed prices" on at least three occasions with LFSs over the years, but only because I valued those merchants. Tell me if the following requests are unfair haggling: 1) "I see that you carry Oceanic salt in 25 gallon packages. I plan on raising the spawns from my clownfish soon and will be needing two hundred gallons of mix each month for the next four months. What’s the cheapest package size and best pricing you can work out for me?" 2) "I’m going to be needing 10 or more sponge filter kits, and a bunch of extra sponges in the near future. I’ve had good luck with the Azoo Oxygen Plus brand but I can’t find it locally and have had to buy it online in the past. Can you get that brand from your wholesaler? I realize that you might need to charge a higher price in order to make your margin but can we work out a price break if I purchase them in quantity to offset that somewhat if need be?" 3) "I’m going to be needing 50-100 snails in the future and I recall that you sometimes have them on sale. Do you think that you’ll have them on sale within the next few months?"
All those sound reasonable to me, for a regular customer. Walmart doesn't know its customers names, nor do they care to. It's unfair for those making comparisons to big box and franchise stores - a LFS is a niche store, catering to a niche market. If I went to a specialty cooking shop and asked them to order a cook book or a specialty baking dish, I'd expect them to be able to accommodate. If I went to a dress shop (like that will ever happen *g* ) and ordered something in my size that they didn't have on the rack, I'd expect them to be able to order that too. Let's compare apples with apples... specialty stores are just that, and LFS are considered specialty stores.
More to ponder:
How many LFSs give livestock deals to frequent customers? How many LFSs keep their cherry picks in the "not for sale" tank until "Joey big bucks" shows up? Is that fair? I've went into stores with big dollar friends and seen them get lots of perks that I didn't get over the years. I've seen a lot of complaining about cherry picking at the wholesale level, but how about the cherry picking that goes on at the retail level?
In my experience as a shopper, many LFS give discounts to their regular customers - in fact the first time I was offered a discount (I'd have never thought to ask for one!) I was surprised, and it was that much more incentive for me to spend all my hobby dollars there. As far as stuff in the not for sale tanks - well I babysit stuff for people moving etc. that is "not for sale" (at any price)... but unless I'm holding something for somebody, or they've special ordered it, it's for sale to whomever wants it. The downside of babysitting is often people want to buy what's not mine to sell and that gets frustrating - but it's a service I offer my customers (no etailer will do that either, eh?!)
How about those 10% off for reef club members cards? Is that fair?
It's fair if the store and club have an agreement. I'm not a club sponsor anymore but when I was I got advertising on their site and literature, in exchange for the discount to hobbyists, who paid dues to the club to get the card... I think that's perfectly fair. I don't sponsor anymore because the discount cost me more than I felt the advertising was worth - but that's a YMMV thing and each shop owner should look at the pros and cons of same.
Concerning the whole "co-op" notion -- well IF somebody were to band LFS togther in an area and co-ordinate ordering etc... who would pay for that? Not like a LFS owner/operator has much spare time as it is - but orders would have to be pooled, paid for, delivered -- for what? Another middleman between the LFS and the wholesaler? Whatever was saved in the pooled orders would be spent in extra incurred costs to administer it. A good idea in theory, perhaps but in the real world it would be a logistical nightmare. Couple that with some stores not paying or slow paying - another administrative nightmare.
Wholesalers and distributors exist for a reason. If it was so easy to bypass them, we'd all be doing it. However for financial and logistical reasons, it's not practical for most of us to have huge quantities of a product line in stock or in storage - personally I stock up on consumables when the vendor offers them on a monthly special, but not to the point where I've tied up too much money in them for them to sit around til the sell. It's taken me quite a while to tweak my inventory levels so that I have enough to be available for sale between deliveries, but not so much that I'm wasting space and money on slow movers - that's an art form that needs to be fine-tuned constantly as trends change and new products come out.
As for the "Wal-Mart" way -- well a chain with the buying power that Wal-Mart has (it's the biggest retailer in the world), it is more like "bullying" power. Wal-Mart takes its time to pay for inventory, dictates what manufacturers can and can't charge - they have all the power because nobody who's selling to Wal-Mart wants to piss them off and lose that kind of volume. Nobody wants to lose the account that's far bigger than most of their others combined, so Wal-Mart gets away with proverbial murder. NO mom and pop niche store of any description can wield that kind of power - again comparing apples and bowling balls.
Just because LFS compete with big box stores, is no reason to compare them. We're better being compared with a specialty store of any kind - we cater to a specific market, with a specific product. If we were trying to compete with a big box store, we'd be a big box store. Think outside the "big box"
Jenn
