Supplier support

I have been fairly amazed by the level of support offered by some of the toy suppliers out there.

Some of them are fantastic, one good example is KN'ex who have a fantastic extranet to support their vendors. Plenty of images and information available for you to download at will. Many of the vendors we have dealt with have been really good, cutting CDs or emailing images really quickly. They have made it eaasy for us to put up some attractive product pages for them which should result in us, and therefore them, selling more of their products! Here is what we were able to do with KN'ex at kidEstore.co.uk

Other manufacturers, and I am not going to name names, are really poor. I am amazed how many don't send catalogues and price lists without being chased for weeks, this is just plain bad business and makes me wonder what their sales support will be like. Then there are the ones with non-existent or poor images. OK, I can understand those with no images - the internet is not everyones cup of tea (or even their area of expertise - although they had better learn fast). What I don't understand is those that send poor quality quality images - we have had the lot - miniscule images, weird proportions and really odd backgrounds. These are supposed to be promotional images for their products to encourage sales!

Still, we have a digital camera and a light studio so I guess there is a bit more work for me once some of these lines arrive with us!