Why Retailers Book a Brand

Snowboard Canada Business, in their latest issue, did what I guess is their annual survey of 65 tastemaker independent leading Canadian specialty snowboard and skate shops.One of the questions they asked was, “When determining your bookings, what is the leading factor in your decision?”

83.9% of the snowboard shops said “Last year’s sell-through.” 0% said pricing was the leading factor. Other choices were relationship with the rep (3.2%), product quality (6.5%), and hype (customer requests), also 6.5%.

on the skate shop side, things weren’t quite so overwhelming, with “only” 43.8% picking last year’s sell-through. Pricing came in at 9.4%. Relationship with the rep was 12.5% and product quality, 3.1%. Hype was 31.3%.

The term “last year’s sell-through” has a different meaning in snow than in skate retailing and I believe that explains why the skate number isn’t higher. Still, if you accept the results of the survey and believe, especially in snow, that sell through is far and away the key factor in a retailer’s brand selection, then there are some obvious conclusions and action items for brands that flow from that.

•Except in the very short run, you’re better off not forcing growth on a retailer that they can’t manage.
•At some point in the expansion of your distribution, you are making an explicit decision to lose some sales or sales opportunities in specialty shops. Maybe that’s the right decision for you, but understand that you are making it.
•Your sale force’s job isn’t so much as to sell as to make sure there’s sell through. Then the selling will take care of itself.
•If sell through sucks, all the advertising and promotion in the world won’t matter. If sell through is good, you won’t have to do near as much of it.
•If there is a sell through problem, deal with it early, quickly and cooperatively if the account matters to you.
•Consider focusing on gross profit rather than sales- yours and the shop’s.
•Be cautious in designing programs that encourage shops to buy more than they can sell well.

There shouldn’t be anything particularly surprising to any of this, but that 87.9% number caught my attention. I thought there might be some value in stating what should be obvious.





patthe