"It's a Buyer's Market. Haggle."

The August 2008 issue of Money magazine devoted a page to this title: "Shopping Strategies. It's a Buyer's Market. Haggle." "In the tug of war with sellers, these days you've got all the pull." By Bob Tedeschi "If there's any silver lining to this sluggish economy, it's this: You, the consumer [buyer], are back in charge. For products and services, "you have a lot more power to name your price," says Nancy Koehn, a retail history professor at Harvard Business School. The proof? Nearly 70% of Americans have managed to negotiate a better deal on a purchase in recent months, according to America's Research." End of Money article! For years we been telling clients they can get desirable deep discount off price 'in season' from their regular vendors. We have never had a client that followed our guidelines and made the effort not be able to. Certainly you will not be able to get deep discount from every vendor everytime you ask ... however, you will score more often than you ever imagined. It is a matter of explaining to the vendor, preferably not your rep. Reps' typically do not make a commission on 'off price' so there is no incentive for them to make off price available to you. It is important you talk with someone in management or in the national show room who is not working on a commission. Every vendor has excess goods! Including every vendor that 'cuts to order'. Either from anticipating greater sales, cutting more than is selling, cancelled orders, orders on credit hold, goods refused by a store or merchandise left after all goods are allocated for shipment. Their profit is tied up in these items that are left ... they need to be sold and they will ... usually to a large operation. You need to convince the vendor you need and deserve in season goods at a deep discount! Often the vendor has small quantities, quantities that are much to small for a large national or regional chain, as an independent store you can use small quantities to increase your gross margin. And, don't be of a 'mind set' that you must have a run of sizes. The lady that wears a size 2 or 4 does not give a tinkers damn about what you have hanging in a size 12 or 14. So, you can clean up a vendors odds and ends. Do not buy something you would never buy at regular price, unless your reason is price and the deeply discount price now fits into your price range, since you can bring it in at full retail and red line or discount it to a price you can sell! Never buy something you don't think is for your store just because the cost price is greatly discounted. Push for in season goods, goods being shipped NOW, at deep discount (40% to 50% off the lowest cost quoted), not to say if the best you can get is 25% or a 1/3 off you shouldn't take it. That's still a significant savings to you and will off set some markdowns. Just start by asking for deep discount and when asked what that means, say 40% to 50% off the lowest price you have sold to major stores. We have worked with hundreds of independent stores and every store that has made the effort and followed our suggestions on how to talk with vendors has been successful and amazed! Let me repeat again: This will not work with every vendor every time! It will work! It will build your gross margin! It will lower your net mark downs! It will improve your bottom line! Stores cannot make a profit or survive by simply buying everything at vendors regular cost and marking it up in the normal way most stores mark their purchases. Those days are over! Your expenses have risen dramatically, you must improve gross margin! Give us a call ... we can help! Milton Waldoff