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Casual

Lifer
Oct 3, 2019
2,577
9,420
NL, CA
For heavily demanded tobacco, SP appears to phase the distribution to try to make people happy. It’s a tricky business, but they seem to have a good strategy for the time and customer base.

Here’s what I saw yesterday with the Gawith blends. Feel free to fill me in if there’s more to it.

1. The emails go out for those with stock notifications set up. At this time, the blends have stock, and you can buy them, but they are marked so that they still show out of stock from the search/brand page. So if you’re just browsing the brand it shows out of stock, but clicking into the blend itself you see you can buy some. This seems to help the email notification people get a shot at it.

2. Day 1, the tin limits are small. 2-5 tins, that sort of limit. So the benefit to being first exists, but it’s only a couple of tins. It’s not like you either get there in twenty minutes or it’s gone.

3. Day 2. That’s today. Limit goes up to 25. Now that every vulture like myself got some tins, everyone can get their fill. Still limited so it doesn’t all go to a flipper who will buy it out and sell it marked up on the secondary market.

As a retail operation you have hard choices for in-demand items. Jacking up the price has pros and cons, as does a lottery system. Personally, I like what they’ve done here better than either of those other choices, but I won’t write the whole essay here to explain why.

But my hat is off to them for making a system that is as customer-friendly as you could make it.

(I put this here because it’s to do with tobacco sales, but maybe it should have gone elsewhere. Sorry mods.)
 

ofafeather

Lifer
Apr 26, 2020
2,769
9,044
50
Where NY, CT & MA meet
For heavily demanded tobacco, SP appears to phase the distribution to try to make people happy. It’s a tricky business, but they seem to have a good strategy for the time and customer base.

Here’s what I saw yesterday with the Gawith blends. Feel free to fill me in if there’s more to it.

1. The emails go out for those with stock notifications set up. At this time, the blends have stock, and you can buy them, but they are marked so that they still show out of stock from the search/brand page. So if you’re just browsing the brand it shows out of stock, but clicking into the blend itself you see you can buy some. This seems to help the email notification people get a shot at it.

2. Day 1, the tin limits are small. 2-5 tins, that sort of limit. So the benefit to being first exists, but it’s only a couple of tins. It’s not like you either get there in twenty minutes or it’s gone.

3. Day 2. That’s today. Limit goes up to 25. Now that every vulture like myself got some tins, everyone can get their fill. Still limited so it doesn’t all go to a flipper who will buy it out and sell it marked up on the secondary market.

As a retail operation you have hard choices for in-demand items. Jacking up the price has pros and cons, as does a lottery system. Personally, I like what they’ve done here better than either of those other choices, but I won’t write the whole essay here to explain why.

But my hat is off to them for making a system that is as customer-friendly as you could make it.

(I put this here because it’s to do with tobacco sales, but maybe it should have gone elsewhere. Sorry mods.)
Good observation. Thanks for sharing!
 
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mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
SP has always had an interesting management and business style, commercially astute but also philosophically attuned. The top management has an artful way of making this a company culture. There are some good brains in charge.
 
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