Doug,
All consumer products companies frown on diverters, P&G is probably the
strictest in allocating only X amount of product on deal ( they base deal
product purchases upon the amount of non deal products). The company does
not benefit from diverters, the individual salesman does. It is not unusual
for a mfg'er to fire an employee or broker who knowingly sells to a
diverter.

Do the retailers who supply you ever "dry up" when the mfg'er determine who
you are using?





"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...

"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 15 Apr 2005 11:14:58 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

~~ snippage ~~

OK....well, if you know anyone who might be interested, please let me
know,
Tom. I have one truckload left, although a large supermarket chain will
probably take it by mid-day today.

Out of curiosity, how did you come into ownership of three truckloads
of laundry detergent?

Later,

Tom

It's what I do, Tom. It's called diverting. Short example: Grocery chain
gets a deal from Proctor & Gamble, giving them better than normal pricing,
for maybe a month or two, on certain products, like detergents. P&G lets
the chain buy as many trucks as they want. They may put some on sale (for
the retail customers), or they may not. Or, if it's a product that won't
spoil, they just buy a lot because...why not?

The other thing they'll do is call companies like ours and see if we want
to buy truckloads and sell it to other chains, or wholesalers, who aren't
getting the same deal. Or, perhaps the one-month deal has passed these
others by. If there's enough spread between "normal" pricing and deal
pricing, it works.

It used to be easy until a bunch of stooges in Washington decided to see
how war affects the price of oil (something anyone can learn from just
reading, living life and watching old war movies). Before the war, freight
was $1.20-$1.40 per mile. Now it's $2.20-$2.50. That shrinks the distance
we can ship, obviously.

There's humor in the business. The manufacturers' reps are usually on
commission of some sort. Their companies don't want customers diverting
product. In other words, if Stop & Shop buys stuff on deal, they want the
chain to keep it for themselves. So, the reps whine to the buyers if
they're buying more trucks than they can obviously use in their own
stores. They threaten to cut off the deal. Then, they stop acting and
leave them alone for awhile while they continue to buy 15, 20 or 30
trucks, selling all but maybe 4 to people like us. Why? Because they're on
commission. :-)