On 01/09/2013 09:06, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 31/08/13 23:35, 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.
Personally, I don't understand why anyone puts their entire future
and livelihood into the hands of one customer. But neither do I
understand the morals of a customer who will do that to a supplier.
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.

That is an example of the reasons my local venison
farm won't supply supermarkets - and the farmer
told me that ~15 years ago.

I seem to remember a TV programme where a small
supplier was encouraged by a supermarket buyer to
spend vast amounts ramping up production, without
any guarantees from the supermarket. The supermarket
was then in a position to say "knock x% off or we'll
stop stocking it", and the supermarket didn't care
that it would become permanently loss-making.

It was also necessary for the small supplier to
offer the supermarket a subsidy to get shelf space,
usually in the form of an "introductory special price"

Food is now relatively much cheaper than when
I was a kid, and these examples are part of the
reason. Cut out the middleman and food becomes
more expensive (que?), as (arguably) illustrated
in your local farmer's market.

I remember a guy telling me that he invested heavily in machinery to
fulfill an order from M&S. He would have been in clover had they
repeated the order, but they didn't, and nor did anyone else