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What are the issues?
No dumping: I had a boss who produced Poinsettias for retail sale in his
greenhouse at a local nursery which was open to the public. People came in all summer and fall to watch the progress. We did them from cuttings in the summer and tended them as they grew and the season arrived to sell them. These were PREMIUM Poinsettias. He would *NOT* discount them as Christmas got closer and customers started trying to bargain. He would say he would rather toss them outside the morning after Christmas than give them away the day before. Since their selling value drops to zero on Christmas morning, this is exactly what he did with many of them, but I do believe he was correct in his assertion that dropping the price creates a false sense of their value for future sales. Another way to illustrate this future value effect is with that of seasonal sales. I had a 20% sale one July, typically my lowest sales month, and the next year in May and June I had customers asking me when I was going to put things on sale again and telling me they were holding off buying until I had the sale. And the numbers for the months leading up to known sales did tend to drop a bit as people waited for the bargains they thought were coming. The only reason to have a sale is to increase income. Often you shoot yourself in the foot by reducing the price to prevent loss. It is better to plan ahead as much as possible (I prefer spreadsheets) and learn how much stock to have on hand than to dump or slash because in the end it comes back to bite you on the butt. I can imagine it must drive the vendors who rely on show sales to put their kids through college insane to watch backyard vendors destroy livelihoods and calling it 'profit' without any inkling of what they are truly doing. There are ways to do things like "George Washington's Birthday Sale" that increase income and reduce prices, but these are *planned events* and do not dump merchandise in the manner we are discussing here. "Susan Erickson" wrote in message ... On Thu, 9 Nov 2006 21:29:13 -0500, "Kenni Judd" wrote: Big question: would he be willing to do it again? We used to drop prices on Sunday afternoon - it increased traffic... but it got so people often waited for Sunday afternoon to buy. This year we found a local vendor to front for us. We did not take discounts because he took back what we could not sell. So we had a better selection on Sunday and nothing looked Shop-worn. He claimed he was getting the phone calls - he might as well be our wholesaler. Have his tags in the plants, etc. SuE http://orchids.legolas.org/gallery/orchids Yes, He has signed up for March 2007. He considered it an advertising piece as well as covering his costs. It is the Contribution Margin that is slim here. But at least when someone calls to ask about one of the plants they bought he can tell them to come in and bring it. It has his tag and it was his volume sale. He wants to bring "club specials" to the preview party and have more exciting plants for the club growers. Species and Ascda, Vanda, etc. Most of the sales are for the non-growing public. Generic (but labeled) phals and other pretties or easy growers. SuE http://orchids.legolas.org/gallery/orchids |
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