Store POS System Blog

Buying Tips from a Very Successful Jobber

Over the last 30 plus years I have dealt with hundreds of automotive parts stores. One jobber consistently makes much more money than any other jobber that I have seen. He credits his success to buying habits, managing expenses and good employees. His management style is labor intensive but it pays big dividends. Here we will discuss his buying habits. He pays his bills as soon as they come it. He does not hold his money as long as possible and he is, of course, never late. He does not haggle over charges unless there is an obvious mistake. His suppliers are willing to put up with his weird buying habits because they know they are going to get paid quickly and with no hassle. He buys from multiple suppliers. He buys direct on his three largest selling automotive lines and he buys from secondary manufacturers. Because these are secondary manufacturers, he and his staff watch closely for defectives. If the defectives for any manufacturers were larger than for a major manufacturer, he would switch. Defectives are not a major problem.

For the remaining items that he stocks, he stores the price from each of his suppliers in his computer. He continues to be amazed at the differences in prices from one supplier to the next on the same item. When he orders an item, he orders from the cheapest supplier. When he sees a price increase for an item from a manufacturer, he tries to buy a large supply at the old price from one of the suppliers before the price update makes it into their system. These buying habits allow this jobber to be price competitive with mass retailers and still make an excellent profit. Mass retailers have taken some of his walk in trade. Their late store hours and advertised specials are a definite draw. However, his large inventory, knowledgeable staff and competitive prices have allowed him to keep his volume up.

If a customer wants an item that he does not stock, he and his staff will work hard to get the item. In many cases that special order item becomes a stocking item. For example, several years ago somebody wanted to buy a 50 gallon drum of hydraulic fluid. The jobber found it and bought it for him. They now stock it and sell it regularly.

Labels: Buying habits, successful automotive jobber

posted by MIB @ 7:54 AM

Quick Price Updates at No Cost

It seems as though the majority of price files available today are in Microsoft Excel format. We at MIB wanted to make it easy to read price files from Excel. To do so we wrote a program to convert TAB delimited output from Excel into a file that MIB can read in a flash. This is especially helpful for updating prices that a supplier provides in the same form time and again. You need only create a small table telling what columns of data in Excel go into what data in MIB. From that time on you can convert that type price file in seconds. Since these price files are normally available for free from your suppliers, you can update your inventory prices at no cost and with no more than a minute's labor. Visit our www.storepossystem.com web site and you will see that this is just another way that MIB delivers a quality point of sale inventory control system at minimal cost.

Labels: price updates, Store POS System

posted by MIB @ 5:14 AM