The Internet and wholesalers
It’s difficult to ignore the internet boom that’s been gathering momentum over the past 7-8 years, especially as it shows no sign of slowing down. The internet has changed the way we work, communicate, date, research and game, but especially the way we shop. Ecommerce is so huge these days that revenue generated from purely web based sales has eclipsed the amount of money spent on Britain’s high streets. Online sales have played a significant role in the collapse of some of Britain’s best known high street names such as Dixons and Woolworths, with shoppers preferring the convenience and cost benefits of buying online rather than venturing into busy town centres to buy computer games, cds and toys. Dixons is an interesting case – here is a company who even 5 years ago were a mainstay of any British highstreet but their sales began to suffer due to the growing prominence of online giants such as Amazon and Ebuyer, who could offer the same brand name goods with significant reductions due to not having to cover the costs of running a chain of hundreds of premium high street sites. Dixons’ parent company therefore adopted an ‘If you can’t beat em join em’ approach, closed all of their stores and made Dixons into a solely online retailer. It’s still a name that people are familiar with and now they can offer the same products with similar reductions to their competitors. It’s was a bold and very forward thinking move that, given the current recession, was very well timed indeed.
Ebay is possibly the biggest and most recognisable phenomenon of the new web generation. Who’d have thought online auctions would be such a huge success! The second hand goods market online is huge, and Ebay is the main contributor to this. Of course Ebay, like any good business, has evolved over time, It’s no longer just second-hand items that can be auctioned off through Ebay, new goods represent a huge percentage of all items sold through the site. Ebay has also become a great friend of product wholesalers and clearance dealers who use the auction facility as a way to get rid of surplus stock. In the past these dealers may have been forced to write off the value of the stock or try to sell direct to the public through car boot sales and classified ads. Ebay now provides them with a means of recouping the unit price they paid for items they couldn’t sell, thereby contributing to a healthier business. One area of business where this is particularly relevant is wholesale jewellery. Like other fashion-driven businesses, wholesale fashion jewellery is dictated by the latest season’s trends, which means jewellery wholesalers have to predict, with some guidance from fashion experts, which items or styles will be popular in the coming months. This can lead to large surpluses of stock for ranges that didn’t do as well as predicted. Ebay now gives suppliers of wholesale fashion jewellery a vehicle to cut their losses which helps towards a healthy cash flow.
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