Page 30 - Fall 2012 Hardlines Strategies
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30
Fall 2012 •
Hardlines
Strategies
ONLINE TOOLS
That’s because Blish-Mize’s online catalog
is packed full of features that allow you to
find the products you need quickly, without
being a computer genius to figure it out.
That’s not its only selling point, either. The
catalog has features that provide you with
more control of the ordering process and
help you get the best deals available.
Easy to Use
Before she started placing orders online,
Susan Crewdson of Kildare Lumber in
North Platte, Neb., had grown accustomed
to using the paper catalog to find the prod-
ucts she needed and then call in each order.
“It was very time consuming,” she says, but
she was a little reluctant at first to try the
online catalog. “I’m not a computer per-
son,” she says. “But then I discovered how
easy it was to use the online ordering. It has
really saved me a lot of time.”
Besides making the ordering process
faster and easier, the online catalog also has
a virtual promotions area that lists all of the
specials available that week. By using that
area, Crewdson can make sure she doesn’t
miss any featured items or special pricing
Blish-Mize might be offering that week. She
can also easily find new items that might
have been added to the catalog.
Crewdson also says the online catalog
has more information available than the
paper catalog, which she can pass on to her
customers. In fact, if her customers want
to take the product information home, she
can print off a page and hand it to them
without showing pricing information.
Full of Features
Besides being easy to use, the online
catalog offers you more options for managing
your orders and Blish-Mize account. Rich
Clem, catalog manager at Blish-Mize, says
the tool has many useful features. “It also
allows you a lot of control over the ordering
process. Everyone should take a look at all of
its features to make sure they’re getting the
most out of it.”
At Hometown Lumber, in Valentine,
Neb., one of the features store manager
Rusty Markus finds valuable is the ability to
get real-time updates from the warehouse.
“I can see the cost and how many of the
particular SKU I need are available. I
can tell right away if I’m going to need a
substitution,” he says.
Markus also orders inventory using an
RF scanner and finds that while the initial
purchase was an investment, it’s more
accurate than using a manual ordering
system. “There’s almost zero chance of
error,” he says. “Rather than having
somebody typing numbers in, with the
scanner, we just walk around the store and
scan the order.”
Here are a few of the other things you’ll
be able to do as an online catalog user:
• Have guest access.
Log in with a customer
number and guest password to access
a catalog with your own custom retail
prices. This way of viewing the catalog will
not show your cost, so it is safe to show
customers and allows them to see more
features of the product than they might be
able to with a paper catalog.
• Have multiple shopping carts.
When you
order something, it is put into a shopping
cart. The catalog allows you to have
multiple shopping carts so you can separate
special orders from regular orders or order
by department.
• Set your own rules.
Set up your own
rules as to rounding up or rounding
down order quantities. This allows you
to prevent broken sell packs and charges
associated with them.
• See news and promotions.
The online
catalog has a place to view current
promotional pricing available from Blish-
Mize. Instead of trying to remember
the upcoming special your sales
representative told you about or finding
the flier that came in the mail, the Virtual
Promotions area keeps all of that in one
place. Throughout the year, you can
see the latest news from the purchasing
department as well as new items.
Ordering Made Easy
Get the Most Out of the Online Catalog at
T
alk to other Blish-Mize customers about
why they use the online catalog at
to place weekly
orders
and you’ll hear phrases like “super
easy,” “more accurate” and “saves me time.”
The Blish-Mize online catalog offers easy
ways to search for products and get more
information on the products you find.
