Fall 2012 Hardlines Strategies

ONLINE TOOLS

Ordering Made Easy Get the Most Out of the Online Catalog at www.blishmize.com T alk to other Blish-Mize customers about why they use the online catalog at www.blishmize.com to place weekly

orders and you’ll hear phrases like “super easy,” “more accurate” and “saves me time.”

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.

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.

The Blish-Mize online catalog offers easy ways to search for products and get more information on the products you find.

• 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.

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Fall 2012 • Hardlines Strategies