Do You Have an Efficient Consumer Response System?
Ok, I admit it. I have big feet (although they seem just the right size to me for me). I wear a size 14, U.S. or size 48 here in Spain. Have you ever tried to buy a size 48 in Spain?
Good luck with that!
Apparently, I am special, like the Prince of Spain, who also is tall and has to have his shoes specially made. What does this have to do with the concept of Efficient Consumer Response? Well, having worked with Business Intelligence and Supply Chain Management systems within the Retail and Manufacturing sector for years now, it occurs to me that not once have I ever been able to convey to the shoe manufacturers that I both want to buy their shoes and that I couldn’t.
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Do you know what the worst possible Retailer nightmare is? Simple, having a potential customer (that would be me) experience a stock-out in their store! Yet, for more than 30 years, in shoe store after shoe store, I have been asking for my size shoe, only to be told, not that they don’t carry them, but that the one pair that they had in my size has already been sold. This is not my idea of Efficient Consumer Response.
Conclusion: Somewhere, there is a guy or gang of guys who absolutely love size 14 shoes, and somehow managed to get to the shoe store I just visited right when they received a new shipment of shoes, and buy them to add to their hoard. On the upside, I need to go to the United States anyway, where you can usually find a size 14.
On a positive note, I now have a ‘relationship’ with the local shoe cobbler or shoe repair guy. Why you might ask? Well, when a pair of shoes happens to fit, you have to learn to get them repaired, over and over again. My guy, actually, I guess my shoe buddy, has come to expect my monthly visits. He knows what breaks, i.e., heel pads, strings, toe pads, and other mysterious shoe parts, and given that mine are er, larger, stocks them. He has an efficient consumer response system.
My recommendations for improving this system:
- Provide an email address on every shoe box.
- Within every store, provide a mechanism (not just a suggestion box) to report to the store management that they just suffered a stock-out.
- Since shoes (you find out these things) are ordered by batches, and the manufacturers send a batch that fits a statistical sizing profile, that the profiles be updated.
- That retailers provide a consumer level Business Intelligence system that ‘pushes’ size availability information out to shoe consumers (or any other product of interest).
As it turns out, I got to work with a direct-to-consumer shoe designer, www.heydayfootwear.com and we actually got to address each of this issues. He was just one of many Shopify e-commerce sites I've got the opportunity to set up. Want to launch your store today?
Finally, keep your shoe repair guy happy at all cost.
