Issue link: https://nbm.uberflip.com/i/1451376
W hen in business, we tend to focus on the obvious due to it being right in front of us, and it typically requires our undivided attention, more often than not. Many shops do not make the time to research how they are buying their products and supplies. Let's take a moment and go over some ways that improving this can help your company in many ways! Look at all of your vendors and see who accepts American Express and does not charge a credit card fee. Right away you are thinking, "Why?" If they accept American Express, you can pay your net 30 terms with the Amex, which give you 30 more days of zero interest if you pay the balance off in full every month. So, if your team is taking a little longer on an order or a customer is running behind on a payment, you do not have to worry. You have given yourself a 60-day buffer. at's not all! You get something in return, which is American Express points, which can be used for several things like buying things for your company along with covering the cost of travel. So, this turns your net 30 into a net 60 for free and helps you make money from the money you already have to spend. at is a win, win. Also, some companies may tell you they charge a credit card fee, but I have negotiated zero credit card fees with some companies, so it is possible to do. Explain to them your volume of business and your growth patterns. em investing 3-4% into paying the credit card processing fee is a small drop in the bucket for gain- ing thousands a year in business. In our company, we order product every day for customer orders. When we first started up, we would hold and order every other day, but now that we are larger, we can order every day and earn free shipping with the majority of our vendors. We also pay attention to what time of the day we are ordering and Making Sublimation Moves Buy Product and Supplies with Net Profit in Mind SMART CREDIT DECISIONS ON INVENTORY CAN BOOST YOUR BOTTOM LINE closing out by. Why is that? Cut off to have your orders in for most companies is 4-5 p.m. but that does not mean your order is guaranteed to ship, so we adjusted our team to start ordering by noon and close out by 3 p.m. to ensure we have a 99% chance of our orders getting packed up and shipped out the same day. While ordering, our product is a four- or five-day ship to our location. We normally will upgrade it to a three-day ship, which gives our team an extra day or two to fit it in to production to gain time. Any advantage you can give your team not only helps you, but also helps your customer in return. Nothing better than under promising and over delivering on a due date to a customer. If you have a rush emergency, you do not just want to order it and walk away thinking it is fine. Take the extra step of emailing your rep with the order info and then follow up with a phone call to make sure they are following the order for you. Your inside sales rep is an extension of your team, and you need to utilize them as much as possible. ey will create another layer of protection for your orders, which protects your customers. Around four years ago, we started stocking certain blank products like T-shirts, for example. We reached out to our vendors to see what the yearly total was, colors, and quantity per sizes purchased. From there, I determined the top-five color choices along with the average quantity per size. is helped me to determine how many per month I needed to keep in stock. We also worked out a pricing structure deal with our vendor based on our buying history as well. So, they knew we would be guaranteed to buy a minimum if we locked in a price with them, which also helped them determine stock on their side as well. Keeping stock in house helps in several ways. You are not having to wait for your daily delivery to start an order. You can take rush orders and produce them at a much quicker rate. If your team runs across a defective piece or has a misprinted shirt, they can pull another from stock without losing time. is all helps your company to produce faster and net a better profit if man- aged well. Every day when our team is ordering they will check our internal stock and notify a manager if they are getting low so they can always backfill any stock needed on the fly. Buying supplies is always interesting in the ways to pur- chase them. Every Wednesday, we order supplies for the following week. Since we have a production schedule and each order tells us roughly what is needed, our managers can check that against our stock to ensure we not only have enough but extra just in case. Each manager will fill out a supply sheet that We order embroidery backers in bulk. 1 2 3 4 B U S I N E S S S T R A T E G I E S 6 8 G R A P H I C S P R O J U L Y 2 0 2 2 G R A P H I C S - P R O. C O M