Chris Saul's Blog

Sunday October 19, 2008

New pics up

I have posted my photos from my India trip in August here.

They are not meant to be photographic masterpieces - it's just what I saw when Mr Baiju was whizzing me through the traffic in our Corolla.

Business Genius at work

I'm finding the business strategies of our two local supermarkets confusing.

One of them is a premium type place - rather like Waitrose. The other is more of a convenience store operation.

I've mentioned the convenience store before. Its strategy is to have exactly the same opening hours as the premium supermarket, whilst maintaining prices that are 100% higher than its competition. Currently its only saving grace is that it delivers for free. Since it's usually shut when we need it and twice the price, we stay away.

The premium supermarket's current strategy seem to be not to have popular items in stock. Organic oatcakes are available in abundance, but more popular items aren't. I had a fun conversation with the manager about this this morning.

Chris: Is it possible to make requests for certain items to be in stock?

Manager: Yes sir.

C: The Times newspaper always sells out very quickly. Can you order some more?

M: It's very popular, sir.

C: I know. I expect that's why it's always run out. Can you order some more copies?

M: The copies sell very quickly. It's very popular.

This conversation went on for about 5 minutes, until we reached an agreement - the manager would ask for more stock.

We then moved onto another product.

C: Would it be possible to keep soda water in stock? You haven't had any for three weeks.

M: It's very popular, sir.

C: I know. I expect that's why it's always run out. Can you order some more stock so that you don't run out?

M: The soda water sells very quickly. It's very popular.

This conversation also went on for a while, as did the final topic - diet ginger ale, also a best seller.

I've never run a supermarket, or indeed any kind of retail outlet, so I can't really criticise, but is it not normal to keep popular items in stock so that you can sell lots of them and make lots of money?

Cockroaches with your meal, sir?

I made it back from Algiers three hours late, getting home at about 0430 on Friday morning.

Highlights of the trip were cockroaches crawling around the galley area and the stewardess dropping the cloth she was using to handle the food, picking it up from the floor and carrying on using it. I didn't eat.

When I pointed the cockroaches out, a steward thanked me, squashed them with his foot and left the resulting squished insects on the floor for the remaining three hours of the trip. I will be doing my best to use an alternative carrier in future.