I welcome to this whiteboard Wednesday
I'm James Shores future chief marketing
officer here at fishbowl let's talk
about consignment pretty basic principle
essentially you as a supplier have your
goods in another store
another small outlet but they haven't
purchased it yet so most of the risk is
on you but there's a lot of good things
that you can do with this as long as you
know how to track and manage them
appropriately so let's take a look real
fast as you as a supplier so let's just
as an example it's gonna be different
for everyone but let's say you kind of
have three typical products that you
have so you have your basic products
it's kind of what you got started with
that everyone goes to four and then
maybe you have a new product line that
you're wanting to test out or break out
into other markets and maybe you also
have kind of your high-end expensive
line it's very specific it's perhaps
even custom-made now one of the benefits
of consignment is let's say you're
trying to get into a large chain we have
a couple customers where they use the
same principle consignment so that they
can help get their product into a larger
chain which helps get them into the
market get their name out there but then
also there's a little more risk on their
side and so they have to be able to
track these things but by getting that
basic product into this large chain they
get their name known and they're also
expanding their potential market but
then there's also the other side of you
might have just individual mom pop kind
of stores places where it's just local
to you and some of that might be
specific in their own clientele so you
might have a shop where again it's just
your basic product that you have their
own consignment or it could be a little
bit fancier store has a new market that
you're trying to branch out with your
own new product line and they want to
carry that or there might even be a
fancier place in town that sells
higher-end wares hiring goods that you
can try to sell your more expensive
offerings again all-in consignment so
here's where
the meth really comes into play because
you need to know how much and where all
these products are especially if you're
spread across a few different places a
few different chains you need to know
where all this is because if you're not
tracking it odds are they're probably
not tracking it as well either so you
need to make sure with consignment the
whole point is that you can try out some
of these new products to get into new
markets new exposure and you can also
try to create your own different lines
well I'm also offering different bases
of what you produce or what you supply
so from the tracking side some really
important things to make sure that you
are aware of is the agreements that you
have between individual stores even the
larger chains the agreements can be
anything from how long you're going to
carry that product till it has to be
returned if a customer returns something
who pays for that cost if they return
product just because I wasn't selling
who covers that what is Freight policy
all of these things what constitutes a
sale and when does ownership actually
exchange hands there's a lot of details
that can go into this so important thing
is that both parties regardless of who
you're working with understand the
contract and it also needs to be
understood the time periods how long
you're gonna have a product in here
before they send it back before they
want to try something else
and again funny we need to know how much
and where this is the most important
part probably of tracking and the need
to have a really good software if you're
trying to track all pen and paper
you're gonna lose talent you need to
know where everything is
when it's been there how long it's been
there how much they have you can even
have the point where you know at what
store it's being successful so that you
can monitor these things and possibly
make even tweaks on your own and of how
much you're providing within the
different categories and product lines
you may carry all this the whole point
is to have good data which is what we
keep hitting and hitting on over and
over again if you have good data you can
make good business decisions and that's
the whole point of being able to track
with consignment and making use of a
good
that's this whiteboard Wednesday do I
see you next week
you
you