in grocery
When researching our feature on open book costing  for full details of that, turn to page 39  I was fascinated by the comments from a commercial director at one of our industry's biggest branded goods suppliers.
Essentially, he was concerned that the roll-out of initiatives such as open book costing and factory gate pricing was causing suppliers and retailers to lose sight of the bigger picture: how best to work together to sell more to consumers. Instead they were focusing inwards on the more mundane "demand and rebuttal" aspects of their trading relationships.
In the process, he argued, both retailers and suppliers were wasting heaps of time, money and energy. He told me: "A far bigger problem than supposedly high product costs is retailers' inability to turn 99% service levels into depots to 99% availability on shelf. Surely we should work together to sort that one out instead?"
He is absolutely right. The Grocer 33 shopping survey gives an indication of the scale of the problem faced by the industry. This week, 15 items were not available. And this, for a basket of staples which you would have thought retailers would do everything they could to make sure were always in stock.
Read our feature on page 42 and you will see that there's plenty of work under way to tackle many of the issues that can lead to products being out of stock.
Clearly, what happens to products between the back of a supermarket and its shelves is critical to this issue. But research we published last week shows that by failing to pull products through this last 50 yards of the supply chain, the industry is losing £2bn in sales. And the problem is getting worse.
Retailers are working hard on a range of initiatives to turn that situation around, as they should. By working with suppliers, they may  finally  be able to sort out the industry's biggest headache.
And this is exactly the sort of issue retailers and suppliers should be spending their time getting to grips with rather than finding new ways of slipping back into the bad adversarial habits of yesteryear.
{{COMMENT & LETTERS }}
When researching our feature on open book costing  for full details of that, turn to page 39  I was fascinated by the comments from a commercial director at one of our industry's biggest branded goods suppliers.
Essentially, he was concerned that the roll-out of initiatives such as open book costing and factory gate pricing was causing suppliers and retailers to lose sight of the bigger picture: how best to work together to sell more to consumers. Instead they were focusing inwards on the more mundane "demand and rebuttal" aspects of their trading relationships.
In the process, he argued, both retailers and suppliers were wasting heaps of time, money and energy. He told me: "A far bigger problem than supposedly high product costs is retailers' inability to turn 99% service levels into depots to 99% availability on shelf. Surely we should work together to sort that one out instead?"
He is absolutely right. The Grocer 33 shopping survey gives an indication of the scale of the problem faced by the industry. This week, 15 items were not available. And this, for a basket of staples which you would have thought retailers would do everything they could to make sure were always in stock.
Read our feature on page 42 and you will see that there's plenty of work under way to tackle many of the issues that can lead to products being out of stock.
Clearly, what happens to products between the back of a supermarket and its shelves is critical to this issue. But research we published last week shows that by failing to pull products through this last 50 yards of the supply chain, the industry is losing £2bn in sales. And the problem is getting worse.
Retailers are working hard on a range of initiatives to turn that situation around, as they should. By working with suppliers, they may  finally  be able to sort out the industry's biggest headache.
And this is exactly the sort of issue retailers and suppliers should be spending their time getting to grips with rather than finding new ways of slipping back into the bad adversarial habits of yesteryear.
{{COMMENT & LETTERS }}
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