CHRIS: They can be broken, and maybe there's an additional cost or handling or service fee to do that. But this, again, encourages the vendors because the vendors want to sell their inventory and they may be willing to break that kit apart in order to continue to flow that B2B stock through their system, especially if they're getting a fixed fee every time. Right, Ron?
RON: Yeah, and you mentioned a couple of really good ones there about potentially buffering, right, because you can't have that happen during a B2B auction And it was to try to help the vendor to make sure that they keep things in stock. And I had a couple other thoughts because there's a couple other tips and strategies there too. So you mentioned potentially buffering. So if they had a hundred say there's forty, right? So that they do that, and then the other one you said was potentially increase the lead time,
Another one might be is to change the low-stock notification. Maybe with that vendor they typically stock a hundred. And then we set up a little stock notification that, as soon as they get down to ten, it automatically triggers a notification to them so they can reorder and start stocking some more and they're always late, they never stock them fast enough. So we bump that up when they get down to thirty, we force them to reorder.
How do you enforce that? And now the fourth tip, "rules of engagement." Maybe you give them three strikes, right? If you're out of stock three times and the buying group can't buy your product, then you're no longer able to stock that particular product because you can't fulfill it to our buying group's needs.
So maybe part of the thing is, you know, your first strike will go in and set and adjust a low-stock notification and we'll bump that up. You had a you know, you didn't have a notification, so now you have to have a notification. So they put one on, they run out of stock a second time. Maybe we bump up their lead time, maybe we lower their score. They're no longer a power seller right. They get demoted to average score. Or maybe they're a little even more intense: red, yellow, and green. Maybe they're a yellow supplier, which is a warning, right? They may not fill in time. And then part of the rule of engagement, if they run out of stock a third time, you take them off.
I mean, you can imagine, if that happened with Costco. You just wouldn't be in Costco anymore, would you? You'd lose your biggest seller. Wal-Mart wouldn't put up with that. Costco wouldn't put up with that. So you have to think about that. If they're trusting you to come in and service their buyers, you need to ensure that you can service the buyers with inventory management solutions. Lead times is even more important than pricing or information about the product pictures and everything. I mean, most people know what they want to buy. They know about what it's going to cost. They might even go to somebody a little more expensive if they can trust they can get the quantity they need in time for a job.
Can you imagine a pool manufacturer working on a pool at the J.W. Marriott? That's a $3 million pool and they can't get their equipment for three weeks, how much that would cost.