Beware the phantom buying stick
Yes, I know, some of our best friends are, or have been, big-budget retail buyers, so I'll have to allow exceptions. But most will never recover from the experience.
It's easy to see why. Buyers armed with an order book and fortified by a computer printout find that every supplier loves them to bits. And if they're any good, the store loves them too. When they snap their fingers and throw wobblies everybody takes it seriously and leaps in to oblige and assist. It doesn't take long for an impressionable, greenhorn young buyer to see the world quite differently to those who are not in possession of the buying stick.
The interesting point is that even after they relinquish the buying stick, either through their own, or somebody else's actions, they can't shake off the attitude. Clothing companies who have employed former big-budget buyers usually get a surprise when he or she carries on as though still in possession of the buying stick. The revised Oxford Dictionary of Schmutta Terminology defines this as 'phantom buying stick syndrome', rather like somebody who loses a limb but has the sensation that it is still there.
The buying stick translates into demands being followed to the letter without question. Those with phantom buying stick syndrome have the same expectations but when their demands are not met they blame the incompetence of those into whose company fate has unfairly cast them.
Where is all this going?
As we know, the best growth business today is that of counselling. The news of any traumatic event is always rounded off with the arrival of bulk counsellors, requested or not, to pump out and flush out the memories of those who witnessed the event.
Since I could do with some additional income, I have established myself as a phantom buying stick counsellor. For a reasonable fee I will detox the attitude of any buyer who leaves retail service and wants to return to normal civilian life. I recommend about 10 one hour sessions during which I will cover forgiveness, learning to say please and thank you, buying your own turkey and grog at Christmas and accepting self blame.
The tales of HoF
Oh how kind and easy going are the conditions imposed upon suppliers by Myer and David Jones - when you compare them to the UK based House of Fraser (after whom I was not named).
For the record, the House of Fraser once encompassed the legendary Harrods department store, but in 1994 there was a split in which the Al-Fayed family kept Harrods while the House of Fraser was floated as a public company.
Today, the House of Fraser is a department store group with 61 sites in the UK and Ireland, and another four set to open next year. Oddly, that is about the same number of stores as Myer, and the product mix is similar too.
But where the stoes differ is in their treatment of suppliers, especially after 1 November, because HoF, as it is known, has just found a way to be more profitable by imposing terms that has supplilers threatening to walk out.
First of all there is the 'retrospecitve incentive bonus scheme' in which suppliers are increasingly penalised the higher their sales growth goes. Between five and 9.9 per cent growth means a supplier must give a two per cent dicount. The scale ramps up to a growth of 20 per cent or more which will cost the supplier eight per cent discouont.
Then there's an item called the 'national distribution centre recovery' which will relieve suppliers of between 2.5 and five per cent to go towards disribution costs (Australian translation: freight and logistics). An item called 'marketing contribution' snips three per cent of invoice value for HoF's efforts in selling your goods. Or how about the 'exception premium location fee' of £10,000 if a supplier's gross annual sales exceed £200,000 at flagship stores such as London'd Oxford street.
For helping to revamp HoF's store card, (bearing in mind that there are a million account card customers) the suppliers will have to kick in 1.8 per cent of invoice.
I hope that David Jones and Myer don't read this because they might get new some ideas on how to screw suppliers. And that's the problem the poms have too. The fear in London is that if HoF gets away with it, other deparment stores like Selfridges and John Lewis will pile into the scrum.
What we're seeing here appears to be a world trend to turn retailers into landlords and suppliers into the load carriers. I wonder whether the retailers in our parents era would have believed us if we told them that, in the future, suppliers would look more like blood doners than business people.
By Fraser McEwing