Merchants running out of stock

[T.J.]

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I know we've just had a mini heatwave, but I can see little point in promoting
aircon4less when 50% of the products I am linking to are sold out.
Do affiliate future vet merchants before signing them up? or is this just an
exceptional cicumstance due to the weather?

[tim_lb]

I'd like to ask a related question from a merchant's point of view.

At what point should the merchant stop offering a product via affiliate feeds?

We sell clothing, which introduces the complication of size and colour availability.

Stock information on the site updates once per hour. We have a threshold, and once the stock of a colour of an item drops below the threshold, the item is no longer listed.

External feeds are often not uploaded as frequently. For example, Froogle will only import once a day. This introduces a risk that an item will appear in a feed, but will have sold out by the time a potential custome sees it on an external site.

Our current attempt to reduce the risk is to increase the threshold at which products are excluded from the external feed.

What else do you think is worth a try?

[John Jupp]

Everyone needs to remember the current ethos for any merchant to trade successfully. Buy stock only for the week ahead or order as and when required.

The old days of holding loads of stock are well and truly past.

Yes a quick heatwave can be a bind and yes merchants dealing with items which only have limited market sales times should pay more attention to the long range weather forecasts but I still remember the Hurricane which was supposed to be just a strong wind according to the weather people and missed out on sales/rentals of chainsaws.

[deadgoodundies]

I think at the moment there seems to be a big problem with getting the feeds ok'd by AF.

We got our first feed checked and accepeted by AF and it's on the site but we have since done a new feed (kept in the same format as before and uploaded to the same location on our site with the same filename) and it's been nearly a week now and the old feed is still showing on AF , we were told that it takes a little time (up to 72 hours) but it's been nearly a week now.
I don't want to have to go through this long a wait each time we update the feed as it doesnt do me or any of my affiliates any good if the feed is not current.
In between me waiting for the 2nd feed to be parsed by AF we have had more stock of underwear and swimwear in so that required me to do another feed , so im on my third generated feed now BUT AF is still only showing the 1st

[ChrisAF]

Firstly TJ, we do check merchants sites before making them live to ensure they are as affiliate friendly as possible. This includes having reasonable stock levels. I believe the current shortage at aircon4less is simply a result of the weather rather than an ongoing issues. As John pointed out most merchants (short of the big high street brands) simply don't have the cash flow to have large amounts of stock and can be caught out. Aircon4less have now been informed of this thread so hopefully if they have anything to add they will do so.

On the issue of the Just Hom feed, typically feeds are updated very quickly after being posted by the merchant, there is a slight delay as we try and verify the quality and accuracy of the new feed, but obviously we want to put the updates feed live as soon as possable. We were not made aware of the issue with the Just Hom feed until this morning and have since been looking into what has caused this delay.

[T.J.]

Thanks for the reply Chris,
Yes, I think it is understandable that the sudden hot snap has boosted the
sales, just glad I'm not doing any ppc. for air conditioners.
Rather than re-doing my pages I will just hope they get more stock in soon.
I might even put a bit of AdSense on the pages temporarily.

[WillD]

From a merchant point of view…
John Jupp – In an ideal world merchants would only buy for 1 week ahead, but some merchants design in house (like Boden) some sell so much that they have to work to manufacturers lead times (like figleaves) and others just cannot buy “off the shelf” (Like crocus) I have had to work with lead timed in the past ranging from 2 days to 2 years! Ok 2 years was extreme but 12 – 14 weeks isn’t uncommon. Merchants don’t want to run out of stock, they stand to loose a load of cash if this happens, but equally they don’t want to end up with overstocks that tie up cash (and can bankrupt you very easily)

Tim LB - Merchants should update their feeds as often as possible, where for whatever reason feeds can’t be updated hourly then you can work in a safety margin by calculating the rate of sale.

e.g. Feed 1 can only be updated once every 2 days.
For this feed you work out your 2day rate of sale and round UP.

i.e. sales for last 10 days of item x = 23, 2 day rate of sale is 4.6 items so if this item has 5 or more show it in the feed, if less then exclude it and sell via other channels. The number of day’s sales that you use to calculate the rate of sale should be adjusted according to your product. If you sell very seasonal items such as Christmas decorations then the trend at the end of October would be up, so take that into account.

Unfortunately for allot of merchants it is now coming to the end of the Spring / Summer season and stock will start to sell out until the Autumn stuff comes in, so keep an eye on your feeds. (Luckily figleaves has lots of stock at all times!)

I suspect that in the case of aircon4less they have been caught by surprise by the heat wave and just didn’t have the stock holding, and are probably shouting, begging, pleading with their suppliers to get some more, because if they have sold out it will be hurting!

Will

[mazmajid]

Guys,

Please don't blame AF for the out of stocks that we are experiencing. This is simply as a result of the mini-heatwave that we are currently experiencing (long may it continue!!).

Our lead-times are quite long c5-6 weeks as our stock comes from the far east. This does however allow us to keep the prices down and really offer our customers value for money. I believe that for fixed wall units we are significantly cheaper than even some of the large DIY sheds.

We do have additional stocks arriving this week c23rd of June, you may not believe it but we already have orders for 15% of this stock!!. We have shipments due circa every month for the next few months.

Clearly with your support, together we can carve out a successful commercial venture for all concerned.

Trust me going out of stock really hurts !!!

If you have any questions or simply want advice on what products to feature, please shout.

Kind Regards


Maz
www.aircon4less.co.uk

[deadgoodundies]

We were not made aware of the issue with the Just Hom feed until this morning and have since been looking into what has caused this delay.

Sorry Chris, I wasn't having a dig, any news on the cause yet??

[tim_lb]

Tim LB - Merchants should update their feeds as often as possible, where for whatever reason feeds can’t be updated hourly then you can work in a safety margin by calculating the rate of sale.
Will

Thanks, Will, the horrid truth is that our back end system doesn't report as well as we would like on sales of a style of an item. The features for reporting on sales of individual colour/sizes are all there, but we have to do a load of post-processing to get the style total.
We tend to do the thresholds on a per-colour basis: if we don't have a size break of a colour we don't show it.

The problem with affiliate feeds is also complicated by the fact that we have to allow for the different frequency with which people will use the feeds. We can provide a new one every hour (or whatever), but we don't have control over how often people will import into their systems. So for the affiliate feeds it seems to make sense to build in a lot more leeway. The situation we all want to avoid is a customer clicking through to the site and then not being able to order what they came there for!

[WillD]

The problem with affiliate feeds is also complicated by the fact that we have to allow for the different frequency with which people will use the feeds. We can provide a new one every hour (or whatever), but we don't have control over how often people will import into their systems.

Hi Tim, if this is a significant issue for you it might me worth your while looking at TD's ad tool, as it self optimises with a constant link.

Will

[tim_lb]

it might me worth your while looking at TD's ad tool, as it self optimises with a constant link.

Will

Thanks for the tip Will, I'll certainly have a look at that.