Why Jobbers Can't Really Do the Ecommerce Thing

I cover this on the website, but I want to go into it in a little more detail.

Buying off price is a very sensitive thing. No company is really eager to announce that they are selling off price or who they sell to. Most companies don't want to tick off their retail accounts, and don't want to devalue their image. Once a brand becomes widely available at low prices, it loses it's appeal.

Anyhow, you probably will never see, maybe half, maybe more, of what a jobber sells. Because that jobber takes it from the manufacturer and places it directly with retail clients. Mainly large retail stores outside of the major markets (New York, LA, San Francisco, Atlanta, etc.). Most people call this "flipping" as in they "flipped" merchandise to a client. Which means it went straight through from the manufacturer to the retail off price store, or even a big store like Saks Off Fifth, Nordstrom Rack, and so on.

The reason companies can't do the "ecommerce thing" is that these companies would hit the freaking fan if they saw this jobber putting their brand name on the internet. It would be over. Their stores would find out, get mad, they would lose accounts, it would be a disaster.

This is why a lot of jobbers can't have websites.

Department store overstock kind of slips through this. There are too many brands, too many people involved and too little enforcement for anybody to keep track of department store overstock. Besides, large retailers like Saks, Bloomingdales and such have so much clout that most brands have no leverage with them.

Except the big ones.

Oh yeah, the companies that have enough money, the can stop their stuff from getting into store stock loads. They take it back. That's right, they take it back. Some sell it through their own outlet stores, some donate, some even sell it to off price chains, but they do it themselves so they have more control over where stuff ends up.

So lay off wanting these ecommerce enabled websites. MOST of the people who have them are either:

Crooks who are going to rip you off. Seriously. Big time scammers.

OR

People just like yourself that decided to have a website, but are not really jobbers. They buy from the same vendors and set up a website selling the merchandise. They are middlemen who buy from the middlemen.