An enormous part of my day here in the bike shop is spent on the phone with various companies checking on orders we have already placed.
We need to constatnly follow up on these orders because of the problems that develop at vendors this time of year. If you have ever wondered why it is difficult to get stuff here is an insight from my experience just this morning:
Wetsuit order for four suits: Vendor lost order. They are re-shipping to us via overnight air. Order was promised to be here today. They said “We just lost it, we’re really scrambling right now.”
Bike company- checking on three orders, a frame and two bikes. Frame order “Fell through the cracks” according to them. This is the fifth time I have checked on the frame order. They promised to call me back in ten minutes. That was 30 minutes ago. Another bike: frame finished but on hold because of no internal cable guides- a $4500 bike on hold for $2.00 worth of parts. Third bike- still not in stock at vendor but will be later this week.
Component distributor- Sorry, no components until maybe Friday. We’ve been waiting eight weeks.
Pedal distributor. Out of most popular pedal. availability may be better in June.
Clothing company- $10,000 preseason order held because $300 worth of items were on backorder. I authorized the release without the backordered items.
Typical day. Tomorrow I will phone these same companies over again and ask the same questions checking on the same orders.
imagine what those companies could do profit wise if they could deliver. I’m willing to bet more than one bike shop has told them to stick the order somewhere b/c they can’t deliver.
You work in an ffin tri shop for Gods sake! You are living the life that us cube dwelling, excel spreadsheet monkeys dream about. My only tri fix is from this forum every day. You are 100% immersed in the world. God help me (and my coworkers) if these tri-websites are blocked from my system.
Buck up dude and smile - you are livin the life we dream about!
I am not bitching. Sure, I would rather be delivering bikes and wetsits to happy customers rather than chasing them around the U.S. on the phone, but this is business as usual. That was kind of the point of the thread.
I don;t mind it, it can get a little stressful, but most of the peope in the industry are very nice and very friendly. Everybody makes goofs- certainly myself included- so it is just a matter of dealing with it and moving as fast as possible to get things done.
I am very disappointed when customers get anxious about getting their stuff or it is running late. I don’t like that. That is why we play detective eveyday with the stuff.
On a high note Robert at Guru does an incredible job of phoning us almost everyday to let us know where bikes are and what is coming and when. He is very proactive. As are Beverly and Superdave at Felt and Sharon, Heather and Emmy at Cervelo. Those guys are all 100% great.
Ahh yes, the “where’s my stuff” topic. Well Tom, let me tell you, I too have been passing along the “?Donde?” this month.
We are selling out every shipment and have a 2 week wait on the next. Basically the factory (hand assabled and machined units, including chainrings) in Madrid cannot keep up with the orders. Also have to take into consideration the intricasies of international delivery management … when dealing with high price European bike parts
It’s amazing to me that companies still can’t take advantage of this critical point of differentiation.
A few years ago when I was working for one of the leading technical appareal suppliers a key reason for our success was that we delivered 100% of the order, on time with no excuses. It’s seemed like such a simple and straight forward thing to do - ship what they ordered and deliver it when they wanted it.
Of course some retailers umm’d and ahhh’d about this before getting on board with the program. They would say that company xyz’s shorts are $5 less, but then they would wait forever to get them. We would say - you can’t make money on stuff that is not in the store!
Its a good thing your suppliers are not in the auto industry. I am currently working with some automotive suppliers. GM demands about 14 ppm reliability. That means less than 14 problems per million components. Toyota basically expects 100% good parts and 100% on time delivery. Screw up a few times with Toyota and you are in big trouble.
Not to offend anyone, but many businesses in the “real world” would be out of business if they ran themselves like some of the suppliers in the bike/sporting goods business do.
I have had some dealings from a consultative perspective recently in the auto parts business and it is extraordinarily demanding and time sensitive.