Page 1 - CASE STUDY - PRINCESS AUTO

CASE STUDY: HOW PRINCESS AUTO INCREASED CATEGORY SALES
THROUGH SMART PURCHASING
Our Challenges
It’s not easy to find good vendors for many of the
products we sell in our stores. At Princess Auto
we’re always trying to find vendors with the
experience and expertise to help us choose
products that will sell, but unfortunately that’s
easier said than done.
Finding reliable vendors with good products and
great customer service who we want to partner
with, is not always an easy task – especially
when we have so many other things going on in
our business that require our attention. Our best
suppliers do much more than merely supply us
with the inventory we need to do our business –
they are also important sources of information,
helping us evaluate new product potential,
tracking our competition and identifying new
opportunities. The best vendors are partners,
helping us cut costs, improving product designs
and even funding new marketing efforts. If we
don’t spend the time to make selecting good
suppliers a part of our growth plan, we always
come to regret it.
Princess Auto has an
excellent reputation for
selling a wide variety of
tools, safety items, punches,
ratchets, electrical items and
much more. It’s essential for our
business to work with vendors that are aware of
current purchasing & retail sales trends and that
know what customers are buying today (and
tomorrow), how much they will spend and even
what kinds of marketing and sales collateral we’ll
need.
A good supplier is reliable...
and will ship the right number of items, as
promised, on time – they’re stable; and have
been in business a long time without changing
their line of business every few years. We look to
their senior executives to see if they are long-
tenured and certainly, we want a solid reputation
with other customers as that’s another indicator
that the company is a good and stable vendor.
We want a vendor with well-trained employees
that can sell and service their products. Last but
not least, we want a vendor who is willing to work
with us to grow both their business and ours.