Wednesday, March 7, 2007

I just wanted some plates!

I have a love/hate relationship with Target. I love their stuff, and I think it's very affordable. I'm usually pleased with my purchases from there.

However.

Target has some major flaws in their stocking system. It seems that if Target is going to start carrying something, say a new shirt or picture frame, they order X number for each store. ALL of them are shipped to the store, ALL of them go out on the shelf, and when they're gone--they're gone! Now, if you see something you like and you don't buy it and you go back later and it's gone, that's your own fault. However, their system really causes a problem when you are trying to buy pieces of a set of merchandise.

For example, when we bought Abby's big-girl bed, we bought the bedding at Target. They had a full product line--sheets, pillow shams, curtains, lamp shades, rugs, the whole bit. Even though it was a fairly new line, though, they were out of a couple of crucial pieces. No chance more would come in. Already off of their website. Frustrating!

The same thing happened to me yesterday when I went to buy supplies for Abby's birthday party. I would find a great set of plates, but they would be out of the napkins. Finally I found an entire line of party supplies that were perfect--only they were out of the plates and half of the decorations. I just bought solid color plates that matched, thinking I could get on the website and order the plates--but this line is nowhere to be found on the website.

Is this a problem everywhere, or does the Target here just get a raw deal with its stock? Would it BE so hard to reorder some stuff? If someone bought it all, clearly it's popular! I'm all for keeping trendy, but this is a bit too much.

I've decided to hold off on my exciting new blog plans until next week--best to get over the trauma of my daughter turning 4 before expanding my empire here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

We can't wait to come to the party...sounds like so much fun? What does she want???
Michelle

Gloria Brown said...

Oh the French and their managerial abilities!

Outnumbered said...

Believe it or not, this is a very successful purchasing strategy for Target. They use GIGANTIC one time purchases to drive down the price of whatever they are ordering for their stores. That way, they can drive up their profit without driving up the price for you and me. The flaw, as you have discovered, is that they cannot duplicate this effect on subsequent re-orders because they cannot duplicate the volume of products being bought.

I will stop there, and not go into any more detail on how they might fix it.