SF stock levels?

Last few times I've been to my local SF they have been out of stock on several things I wanted. Desmond reports the same experience. I think a few around here have mentioned it as well.

I belong to that Screwfix Panel thingy where they ask you to take part in surveys - and the last one was about stock levels & what did I do when things were out of stock.

Have they finally realised they are losing out to Toolstation?

Reply to
The Medway Handyman
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My local branch (Kings Lynn) has surprised me a couple of times recently with having more obscure items in stock.

My impression is that they don't really work out how bursty the rate of sales of some items are e.g. they may not sell many of a particular plumbing fitting - but then a customer will want 4 at once - there's no point holding 1 in stock, as the sale will rarely be just one.

i.e. Screwfix is full of automated processes, when it needs a bit of experience of what real customers do.

Reply to
dom

Like many catalogue driven operations they seem to have fallen into the trap of having too many products for the earlier smaller shops to carry a decent range. Our local TS is about 4 times the warehouse area of the SF.

Reply to
John Rumm

Well, they do purport to tell you how many they have in stock at a specified branch if you click on the appropriate link. Of course, I've no idea whether what the computer says matches reality!

Reply to
Roger Mills

Toolstation don't quite claim that - the website says it shows stock level as of start of trading that day IIRC.

Saying that, it does seem to be correct on the few things I've looked at. Couple of times now it's said the Folkestone branch has one of something I wanted, and I've actually mentioned it to them and they have come back with it, confirming it was the only one on the shelf.

Given shoplifting is pretty much impossible, they don't really have any excuse not to know stock levels. I assume the figures only update overnight as they have some sort of updates back to the centre nightly.

The other thing that is handy, is the way you can fill a basket (over a long time if you want) then when you print it out it gains a magic number. At the store they just enter that code and they don't need to rekey the order.

Thinking about it, that implies they must collect that data from the central system in real time. Shame they can't update stock levels in real time as well.

Darren

Reply to
D.M.Chapman

'Shoplifting' by the *customers* might be impossible...

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Well yeah, I did think that as I typed it... :-)

Darren

Reply to
D.M.Chapman

OK, so call it 'shrinkage' then ...

Reply to
Andy Burns

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