OMG I think the sky is falling. I find myself agreeing with Eric, not just once... but twice in this thread!
Eric wrote:
Sticking to the topic of Rob getting some brown frown..it's just depressing to hear that a retailer prefers to tranship over buying wholesale. There are so many ethical issues involved, and the pricing is so complex that most of the stores I speak to about costing actually have no idea that it's actually MORE expensive than buying wholesale. Costing out a shipment that has so many hidden charges, it's not very easy to calculate real costs. Also, previous industry surveys have shown excessive doa's and daa's on transhipped product versus wholesale product. It's really a black cloud hanging over the industry that needs to be addressed. Fortunately we have seen a huge trend away from Transhipping and more focus back on the wholesaler. I think the slowdown might have something to do with it, and tranship is really more beneficial when done in big volume. That's the stores best chance to save, but with our efforts to lower pricing on key items, it takes away the need for transhipping and the cost factor goes away.
I agree with this. It may not necessarily apply everywhere, but I've been approached to transship and when I do the real math, between the air freight from wherever to LAX, then on to ATL, then the reox, forwarding, brokerage fees, box charges and all the other nickle and dime stuff that gets added in along the way, in the long run it didn't make sense to me, comparing the perceived "savings" to the risks. If everything goes smoothly, it may work out to a few bucks difference, but the toll on the livestock isn't worth it. At least for me in my shop it's not.
Eric also wrote in his last post about wholesalers policing their clientele. I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt here on this one, that if he discovers somebody is misrepresenting themselves, he puts a stop to it. I don't know - I've never been to 104th... but it sounds like he's making a good faith effort to keep it above board.
I do know that a lot of people who frequent my store have mentioned that they have gone regularly to "wholesaler X" in my neck of the woods, either with another shopkeeper or on their own, with whatever "business license" they have, and have been able to walk in and walk out with purchases, and that annoys me. But - that's wholesaler X's business, not mine, and I don't buy from them anyway. I did for FW but I don't carry FW anymore, and as such, I don't support them anymore. Most folks are boastful about it as if they've pulled one over on 'the man'... and it's quite easy to do apparently.
I'll even add... that I think a large part of the "PR" problem that brick and mortars have earned, is that it seems that shopkeepers aren't shy to share wholesale price lists and/or invoices and such with their customers, or they leave them lying around where folks can read them. Or worse, transship price lists.
So the customer sees a list where the shop can buy a particular fish for $0.93 per the transship list, but the fish is priced at $35 in the store. Suddenly the customer assumes that the shopkeeper is making $34 "profit" on that specimen. What they don't realize is all the other costs tacked on to that, which I mentioned above. If you add up the real cost of that "93-cent" fish, it's likely more apt to be about $10-12 , which is about what you could buy it from a wholesaler for, after you count the wholesaler's markup (their stock list price), box charge and your air freight and time/gas to go pick it up.
Add to that the cost of retail space, utilities, staff... suddenly the "profit" on that $35 retail fish isn't so much anymore either.
Still, the consumer sees what the store "pays", and feels like somebody is making them hold their ankles. They don't consider all the other factors, and they are just left with the feeling that the LFS is ripping them off, and laughing all the way to the bank.
We here know that's not the case. But unfortunately that's where we are, and IMO that's why a lot of consumers make the choices they do, because somehow with the half-information that they have, they think that how a brick and mortar runs, is somehow unfair.
Those same folks don't seem to grumble at the price of their groceries, appliances, video games, clothing.. but mention LFS pricing and they go off the deep end. Retail is retail... we all have to mark things up accordingly to pay the bills.
Jenn
