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That is why most small one man band retail shops are struggling.
Robo, like you we sell NeedleArt. Certainly with DMC silks I have seen them on the net cheaper than we pay trade prices.
Now whether they are the real McCoy or not, I am not sure. But they are cheaper and the customers know it.
Many moons ago, DMC told me that when they first wanted to sell their threads in USA, they realised they could not charge the same prices that they were charging over here, so they heavily discounted them and used the Uk to subsidise their prices!
Great, when you consider the size of our country to USA. The Americans, it seems will not take to being exploited and because of the size of their market and DMC wanting to break in, as Anchor (Coats) had the monopoly this is how it all happened.
You can still buy the threads in the USA at cheaper price than trade over here! This is probably what these firms are doing, however, in the past many firms have used thread sales as a lost leader to get customers in and buying other products which do command a profit.
Guess it depends on the volume of thread sales to warrant the extra efforts of importing direct from the states.
We always try to keep our thread prices lower than rrp as customers really seem to notice and do return for more and purchase other items.
Tapestry wools we also used to discount as volumes were amazing and it was more than worthwhile, but over the last few years tapestry has taken a big dive and so we now keep to rrp on wools.
I don't know what your market is where you are, but it may be worth considering taking on Anchor silks as well as DMC, it can save a lot of time converting numbers if you are busy and it gives you an extra market for people that will only buy Anchor. (forget the tap wools at the moment though).
There have always been rumours that DMC offer discounts to certain people on threads. This is strongly denied by DMC but I am pretty sure it happens. DMC also maintain they use no wholesalers, and you can only deal direct with them, I know for a fact this is not true but it seems to be a closed shop.
John wrote:Sorry I misunderstood Robo, I didnt realise that they were selling their product to your customers and undercutting the price that you sell it for.
I'll get my coat.
I know that they are selling to the end user in every case with the tapestry stretcher - we would not buy them for resale as framers (would we?) and even if we thought we could and ordered 300 at a time, we wouldn't get the 50% discount to make it worthwhile.
My point is simple - this is not a trade (only) supplier and they may, I feel, if they did sell us stuff for resale, happily join the ranks of those that John (Merlin) mentions above.
We have sacked a couple of firms on the craft side when we have seen stuff in Argos cheaper, or about the same as our trade price. It's not just Ebay.
This is the same horse - different jockey - and if I'd bought one of these stretchers from them and then seen them £30 (or whatever) less on Ebay, they'd be out.
Would anyone actually think "Oh that's OK - obviously they didn't need a rep on Ebay - silly me for not looking there first?"
'nuff said on this for me - some things make me so angry my teeth wobble and however strongly I feel about something I don't need confirmation nor am I going to be turned. So all I'm doing is ruining my manicure really!
(Bar index finger, left hand - nicely padded - NASTY cut today)
I haven't bought one, don't really need one and haven't any axe to grind about this. It's a nice idea, but there may those who would rather make their own after all this! After all they ain't rocket science to build:
Considering the other things which Tabmaster sell to the framing trade, I think some hasty P.R. gestures to unhappy trade customers might be a smart move. I hope this does not offend, but some quick thinking and the right gestures would probably do Tabmaster a bit of good and enable those in the trade who want to retail these, to do so. These trade customers are your natural allies in marketing your product.
So Tabmaster, how do you fancy developing some retail outlets within this trade and reaping the sales from it. As a product it ticks a lot of the right boxes to be a success. A little bit of mending relationships is the smart first move and then discussing discounts with those who want to retail this product. It's not too late!
John wrote:It does seem to be widely accepted, even expected, that online purchases should be cheaper. For example, I see that I can save £30 pounds if I buy the sat-nav that I fancy online from PC World rather than walking into one of their stores.
This does seem to be the case with almost anything these days.
Major suppliers are being undercut by online retailers all of the time.
A prime example which happended to me only a week ago. I am a trustee of a street kids charity working with kids in Thailand http://www.pattayastreetkids.org and one of our donors offered to buy some Lego for me to take on my next visit in April.
I selected various Lego kits and the price from both the official Lego website and the Lego shop in Brighton was £107 but from Amazon. co. uk the identical factory sealed kits were £61.
So as Amazon are not selling the items at a loss out of the kindness of their heart who is ripping who off? Obviously Lego are aware that they are being undercut but choose to turn a blind eye because even at the prices that they sell to Amazon they are making a profit.
I agree we live in a free market economy, long gone are the fixed prices retailers were obliged to maintain such as the net book agreement , but I would expect a so called "Specialist supplier to the framing industry" to offer his best price to the framing industry, not the general public.
