Page 22 - HW FEBRUARY 2022

sales & merchandising agents
TALKING AROUND THE subject of sales agents, someone in the hardware channel whose opinion I respect came up with the description “good keen people doing the best they can under difficult and changing circumstances”.
While that does indeed seem to fit the profile of a typical sales agent right now, that also just about sums up almost everybody working in and around hardware and building products, in fact almost anyone working anywhere in New Zealand.
But many if not absolutely all merchants, retailers and suppliers are struggling for people. They’re struggling for stock. And they may well be less than certain about their next delivery of imported goods.
So, pity the sales agent, whose task it is to be the interface between suppliers and merchants or retailers, the line of communication charged with conveying sometimes less than optimal delivery dates and ongoing price increases.
In which respect, by the way, EBOSS says the average increase in the cost of building materials over the last quarter of 2021 was 16%, and it is forecasting a further 12% increase by April 2022.
Seeking certainty on both price and supply, more than a
few builders have been placing the same order with multiple merchants or retailers and taking delivery from the first to come up with the goods.
Added to which, unemployment has just fallen to a record low, while wage inflation has risen to its highest level in a decade.
No-one I have talked to so far this year will put forward numbers, let alone dates, when asked “how and when will this end?”
But, having discussed these issues and more with four top
20 NZHJ | FEBRUARY 2022
STEPHEN EDLIN –
“The only guarantee that I’ve learned through life is that human beings are very bad at predicting the future”
sales agents – a quartet of these “good keen people doing the best they can under difficult and changing circumstances” – perhaps we can begin to form some impressions in this the first NZ Hardware Journal of 2022?
ON THE MARKETPLACE
I start with a long-time player in the sales agent game, Stephen Edlin, owner of Central Region Sales.
Stephen’s prediction from last year that the hardware industry “could do quite nicely” out of the need for new homes and a surge in renovations came true but only paints half the picture.
“I didn’t factor in the shortage of supply,” he admits today. “Being sort of a believer in the free market, I actually thought supply and shipping would free itself up and that those issues would be eased.”
No such luck but, faced with empty shelves, there are tried and tested ways around out of stocks, although, he says: “It does rely on retailers becoming real retailers,” by which he means merchandising alternatives the right way.
Continued on page 22 8 MORE AT www.hardwarejournal.co.nz