Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison
Quote from: GraphicDisorder on February 07, 2013, 12:05:11 PMQuote from: Inkman996 on February 07, 2013, 11:50:00 AMQuote from: blue moon on February 07, 2013, 11:42:24 AMQuote from: Inkman996 on February 07, 2013, 11:18:19 AMQuote from: tonypep on February 07, 2013, 11:15:09 AMI totally get why but they discontinued the CCI DC products and won't carry the new WR14 emulsion. Still sucks. Peter are you there?Still waiting for them to fix their website. Peter said they are working on it, uh thats hard to believe. Nazdar is huge and wildly successful and they charge a premium for their supplies yet they cannot invest in a practical web site.in a big company like that, converting the web site with all the different product is a HUUUGE undertaking. You are talking synchronizing the warehouse management so the orders can be picked, tracking entered, inventory status updated and so on. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, think multiple locations with same product, accounting, billing. . . On a cheap end, this is a $100k project and I have seen them run into seven figures for very large companies.Peter said they are working on it and I am sure they are, but when you have to create a program to talk to several different departments and several different databases within each dpt, it takes time. From what I remember he said they were months away from having it up.pierreI see huge companies daily with live inventory even companies smaller than Nazdar. I could probably list ink supply companies ad naseum that have excellent web sites and they are smaller than Nazdar. Wether they are working on it or not I still find it hard to believe it would take this long.I don't find it hard to believe at all. My online store changes DAILY and took us weeks just to get the very small amount of products set up compared to a company like Nazdar. We used to do a lot of online store design/maintenance a few years back, one site had 1000's of products many with many options each, it was a like a ecosystem, changed daily. The time involved was HUGE. It choked our business even for awhile. We basically bowed out of several deals and are moving more away from web all the time. It's a time killer. It's a huge project to do something like that, assuming they are going all out.Look at sites like Sanmar, NES, Alpha their dynamic inventory makes Nazdar look like a mom and pop. Nazdar has the money and resoources so I do not believe it would take them years to implement a decent practical web site. Hell Lance Calibrated has a similar amount of products and he is a one man show.
Quote from: Inkman996 on February 07, 2013, 11:50:00 AMQuote from: blue moon on February 07, 2013, 11:42:24 AMQuote from: Inkman996 on February 07, 2013, 11:18:19 AMQuote from: tonypep on February 07, 2013, 11:15:09 AMI totally get why but they discontinued the CCI DC products and won't carry the new WR14 emulsion. Still sucks. Peter are you there?Still waiting for them to fix their website. Peter said they are working on it, uh thats hard to believe. Nazdar is huge and wildly successful and they charge a premium for their supplies yet they cannot invest in a practical web site.in a big company like that, converting the web site with all the different product is a HUUUGE undertaking. You are talking synchronizing the warehouse management so the orders can be picked, tracking entered, inventory status updated and so on. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, think multiple locations with same product, accounting, billing. . . On a cheap end, this is a $100k project and I have seen them run into seven figures for very large companies.Peter said they are working on it and I am sure they are, but when you have to create a program to talk to several different departments and several different databases within each dpt, it takes time. From what I remember he said they were months away from having it up.pierreI see huge companies daily with live inventory even companies smaller than Nazdar. I could probably list ink supply companies ad naseum that have excellent web sites and they are smaller than Nazdar. Wether they are working on it or not I still find it hard to believe it would take this long.I don't find it hard to believe at all. My online store changes DAILY and took us weeks just to get the very small amount of products set up compared to a company like Nazdar. We used to do a lot of online store design/maintenance a few years back, one site had 1000's of products many with many options each, it was a like a ecosystem, changed daily. The time involved was HUGE. It choked our business even for awhile. We basically bowed out of several deals and are moving more away from web all the time. It's a time killer. It's a huge project to do something like that, assuming they are going all out.
Quote from: blue moon on February 07, 2013, 11:42:24 AMQuote from: Inkman996 on February 07, 2013, 11:18:19 AMQuote from: tonypep on February 07, 2013, 11:15:09 AMI totally get why but they discontinued the CCI DC products and won't carry the new WR14 emulsion. Still sucks. Peter are you there?Still waiting for them to fix their website. Peter said they are working on it, uh thats hard to believe. Nazdar is huge and wildly successful and they charge a premium for their supplies yet they cannot invest in a practical web site.in a big company like that, converting the web site with all the different product is a HUUUGE undertaking. You are talking synchronizing the warehouse management so the orders can be picked, tracking entered, inventory status updated and so on. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, think multiple locations with same product, accounting, billing. . . On a cheap end, this is a $100k project and I have seen them run into seven figures for very large companies.Peter said they are working on it and I am sure they are, but when you have to create a program to talk to several different departments and several different databases within each dpt, it takes time. From what I remember he said they were months away from having it up.pierreI see huge companies daily with live inventory even companies smaller than Nazdar. I could probably list ink supply companies ad naseum that have excellent web sites and they are smaller than Nazdar. Wether they are working on it or not I still find it hard to believe it would take this long.
Quote from: Inkman996 on February 07, 2013, 11:18:19 AMQuote from: tonypep on February 07, 2013, 11:15:09 AMI totally get why but they discontinued the CCI DC products and won't carry the new WR14 emulsion. Still sucks. Peter are you there?Still waiting for them to fix their website. Peter said they are working on it, uh thats hard to believe. Nazdar is huge and wildly successful and they charge a premium for their supplies yet they cannot invest in a practical web site.in a big company like that, converting the web site with all the different product is a HUUUGE undertaking. You are talking synchronizing the warehouse management so the orders can be picked, tracking entered, inventory status updated and so on. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, think multiple locations with same product, accounting, billing. . . On a cheap end, this is a $100k project and I have seen them run into seven figures for very large companies.Peter said they are working on it and I am sure they are, but when you have to create a program to talk to several different departments and several different databases within each dpt, it takes time. From what I remember he said they were months away from having it up.pierre
Quote from: tonypep on February 07, 2013, 11:15:09 AMI totally get why but they discontinued the CCI DC products and won't carry the new WR14 emulsion. Still sucks. Peter are you there?Still waiting for them to fix their website. Peter said they are working on it, uh thats hard to believe. Nazdar is huge and wildly successful and they charge a premium for their supplies yet they cannot invest in a practical web site.
I totally get why but they discontinued the CCI DC products and won't carry the new WR14 emulsion. Still sucks. Peter are you there?
Quote from: Inkman996 on February 07, 2013, 11:50:00 AMQuote from: blue moon on February 07, 2013, 11:42:24 AMQuote from: Inkman996 on February 07, 2013, 11:18:19 AMQuote from: tonypep on February 07, 2013, 11:15:09 AMI totally get why but they discontinued the CCI DC products and won't carry the new WR14 emulsion. Still sucks. Peter are you there?Still waiting for them to fix their website. Peter said they are working on it, uh thats hard to believe. Nazdar is huge and wildly successful and they charge a premium for their supplies yet they cannot invest in a practical web site.in a big company like that, converting the web site with all the different product is a HUUUGE undertaking. You are talking synchronizing the warehouse management so the orders can be picked, tracking entered, inventory status updated and so on. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, think multiple locations with same product, accounting, billing. . . On a cheap end, this is a $100k project and I have seen them run into seven figures for very large companies.Peter said they are working on it and I am sure they are, but when you have to create a program to talk to several different departments and several different databases within each dpt, it takes time. From what I remember he said they were months away from having it up.pierreI see huge companies daily with live inventory even companies smaller than Nazdar. I could probably list ink supply companies ad naseum that have excellent web sites and they are smaller than Nazdar. Wether they are working on it or not I still find it hard to believe it would take this long.I have to agree is Inkman. Websites are not built like Pierre said anymore. They are all templates and have backend programs that are just dropped in. They just copy and past the shopping cart and inventory and so on, nothing is programmed anymore. Now for the front end design and customizing the drop in boilerplate stuff, that is where the money comes in. Most companies will never pay for the customization. Even Ryonet uses a company called Online Stores or something like that. Its just a template website that would just drop all your items in. In this industry if you don't have a website that takes orders you are losing a ton of sales. A website like Ryonets can be had for less than a few thousand. You will have to put the time into adding items. The cost to pay someone to add items will add up but that is just your day to day running of your business.
You are right the customizing does add up. Depending who you work with the cost can be minimal. You are talking about redoing the whole way that the company does business, not just a website you can order stuff on. Many times programmers can set up a system that works so well the company can fire many positions because the the website and back-end programs run so smoothly that that you really only need a shipping person to do everything. When an order is made on the site it prints out a package slip and a shipping label. You just need some one to fill the box and slap the label on it. All the accounting is automatically entered and inventory is adjusted. I have heard companies have auto reorders on products set so when inventory gets to a certain level their suppler gets a email with the needed reorders. Its very smooth and makes life easy.
Strangely I actually agree a lot with Brandt when it comes to the phone, I prefer to either have an accurate catalog or online store I can peruse at my leisure and decide what I need, being able to do this allows me to spot things I forget I need to get. I can't do that on the phone since I am not seeing what is available.
It’s a little more complex than going to a third party to buy a pre-packaged web solution.
With regards to the website I'm just old school and like to call and talk to a person primarily to determine availability and which location an item will be shipping from.(Sorry Brandt I know you'll be grilling me on that!)