Fabrics; More is better?

[Randy]

At HR we saw early on that the more fabrics we had the more likely a visitor would buy. When someone visits our site and then buys, we call that a conversion.

Sometimes that is all we are about, what was the conversion rate today?

Then we come to our senses and understand value, service and choice are what makes us stand out in the crowd.

Sure the more fabrics we offered made it easier for you to buy. But then came the challenge. 135+ fabrics, how do we keep these fabrics in stock? How do we anticipate the demand? How do we deal with our suppliers saying we can’t deliver for 3 months?

Right now it is a total frustration to me when a fabric we offer becomes “Out of Stock”. Why didn’t we anticipate demand? Well, we did. Well, why is it out of stock? We normally order this fabric every three months; the supplier put us on back order for 6 weeks. Put us on back order for 6 weeks, why? Because they don’t do a fabric run until they have orders for 5,000 yards of fabric.

When we order fabric from our vendors, 600 yds is a big order for us. So we wait, and there is no way to know when the fabric will be back in stock.

We are committed to doing better. We haven’t found the solution yet. Is it larger fabric inventories? Where do new find the space in our factory? Can we focus on the top 20 best selling fabrics? What are those fabrics?

We’ve come a long way from back in 1999 when we offered one style and 15 fabrics.

All along the way it was, “How do we give the customer the value they are looking for?” This remains as true today and it is our commitment into the future.