Blogger 365 Day 328 - Peace out

     Remember when I said I was getting close to snapping on someone?  Well thankfully someone obliged me.

     It all starts with a product called Peace Tea.  Now I will admit that I have never tried the product, though the people I have spoke too that have all seem to like it.  I have an aversion to canned teas after the dreaded Arizona incident (remind me to tell you about that some time) and as a result I never drink tea out of cans, I need to be able to see the beverage inside when it comes to that liquid.

    Back to our story, Peace Tea is provided locally by Coca Cola bottling.  I do not know if it is a Coke product, or if it is an independent product and Coke has the local bottling rights for it, but whatever the case may be, when it comes to Smithfield News, if we want Peace Tea we would have to order it from Coke.  Now we have a number of tea products and they usually fall into one of two categories, either they carry a higher retail based on taste or name recognition, or they fall into a cheaper variety and get by on price point.  When Coke first pitched us on carrying Peace Tea, it was a tea that was going to get by on price point, it was a pre-priced can retailing for .99 cents, which put in along the same lines as Arizona Tea or our 1 liter Brisk bottles, which retail for .99 or $1.00.  So we started carrying it and Peace Tea did pretty well for us, well enough that we were ordering multiple cases of it on a weekly basis.

     Then Coke decided that they were not making enough on the pre-priced cans, so they got rid of them, and changed the price on them to the retailers, which in turn changed the price to the customer.  What was once a 99 cent product now retailed for $1.39.  Sales plummeted, to the point where I quit buying it altogether because if I would buy a case it would end up sitting in the stockroom for weeks on end with few sales to justify its purchase.

     About a month ago the higher ups from Coke were in the store to talk to Ed, our existing contract with Coke had expired and we spent months trying to get them to come in so we could work out a new deal with them.  Finally they sat down with Ed and came to some agreement, part of which was that they wanted to try a couple of new things to see how well or poorly they would do, so they were going to come in and reset all of their coolers, arranging them so that they would best display some of the new stuff that was coming in.

     That brings us to Tuesday, my new Coke rep comes in to place an order with me, so I do a walk through of the stuff I need and after the order he says that there will be additional cases coming in to facilitate the reset including Peace Tea.  At that point I told him not to even bother with the Peace Tea, we had it already, it doesn't sell.  He agreed but a short time later he said his boss Eric said to send it because it was part of the reset.

    So the order comes in on Thursday, sure enough today when the crew came in to reset the coolers they start putting the Peace Tea out.  I double check the invoice, just in case maybe the pricing had changed on Peace Tea and we could retail it at 99 cents, where it sold.  But alas, it didn't, if I carry it it will still have to sell at the $1.39 price point, which means it will not sell at all.  So I send Eric a message saying that the Peace Tea can be picked up the next time we get a delivery, we had it before and it didn't sell and I see no need in repeating the same mistake twice.  Eric gets back to me and says that we did well with it, then proceed to quote me sales numbers from two years ago, when of course, it was 40 cents a can cheaper. 

     Yes kids at this point I am officially pissed off, so I email him back and say he can either pick up the cases on the next delivery or I will shut off all Coke orders to our store until every last can is sold, regardless of how long that takes or how many other Coke products I run out of in the meantime.  As for how many cases we sold, why don't you ask our last rep how many I bought from her rather than quoting two year old sales numbers to me.  Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining.

    So the first week of me running the regime already sees me picking a fight with Coca Cola.  Let's see who is n my shit list next week.