Assuming that I'm not in Sacha's killfile along with half of Usenet.

Sacha wrote:
Not so long ago I told Ray that I'd read of a wholesale nursery going
belly up. Today, he learned a bit more about it and said it was
because it had a £3 million order from a supermarket chain which
suddenly decided to halve that order. Then it said that if they
potted the remaining order on, they might buy them. They didn't.

If "Ray" had have dug a little deeper, he would probably learned that this
is a standard a clause in the contract between the two parties that allowed
them to do that - and the nursery owners would have been well aware if it
and agreed to it. It has happened before with farmers having fields of
crops that had been ordered two years previously refused. It simply protects
the supermarkets profits if the produce is not selling to well in their
stores.

Personally, I don't understand why anyone puts their entire future and
livelihood into the hands of one customer.

There are many reasons for doing so and greed is one of those - or they
simply take a gamble.

But neither do I understand the morals of a customer who will do that to a
supplier.

Then you are very naive as a business woman, as it happens every day -
particularly if those customers/businesses carry a great deal of 'clout'
within their areas of expertise. After all, like you, they are only there to
make a profit any way the legally (or otherwise in some cases) they can.

The more I hear of this sort of thing, the less inclined I am to use
supermarkets and am minded to go back to the old days of shopping at
small individual shops for every need, wherever possible. It's less
convenient, it takes longer and it may well be a bit more expensive
but if supermarkets can do this to their suppliers, it's a short step
from that to "you can only buy what we offer you, there is nothing
else" and all our high street shops are gone and so are our choices.

As for going "back to the old days of shopping" do you really think you will
be better off? You will in fact find that many of those "small individual
shops" will be unable to supply your "every need" as it takes a great deal
capital tied up in stock sitting on their shelves on the off-chance that
enough customers will walk through the door to buy it - and many are unable
to do that. Customers are really rather fickle with what they actually want
or need.

How much capital do you have tied up in stock - and how much of that stock
goes to waste?