Angling direct "king of the catch" competition...

[binka]

A chap I know is often on the verge of pulling his hair out when it comes to stocking certain products and some brands are far more notorious than others.

From what I can gather it's the complexity of the supply chain and the 'sweeteners' attached to quantity which either delays things or prohibits him from getting things altogether depending on the company...

 

[mikench]

I know that Steve! When I bought the Emcast I gave my local tackle shop the first chance and whilst his price wasn't too far off( and I would have agreed it) he had to buy 10 from Diawa and that couldn't be justified as he would have 9 left!

 

[Philip]

There are other ways to handle this than having to stock everything. I am sure that @mikench would be happy if they have option "get it in 2 weeks". Win-win for both sides, he would get what he wants, and they would get the money + customer

Its a nice idea but ...you would have to handle multiple single orders each time someone asked for something a little unusual and be unable to negotiate any bulk discount as you dont know what your expected volume of trade would be.

End result is that you would have to charge the full unit price each time then add your own markup on top of that to make some money. In which case whats to stop Mike just buying the same single unit at the non marked up price himself direct and cut you out of the middle ?
Not to mention the admin nightmare of handling all those single orders. If it did take off I suspect you will be spending the entire day running around with packaging tape in one hand, address labels in the other, a hands free mobile phone constantly plugged in your ear and a calculator stuck somewhere else !

….I know I'm the prophet of doom, sorry, but look on the bright side ..I’d place an order with you ! …I need some more float rubbers…