Did you know?

That the word “vendor” comes from the French verb "vendre", which means “to sell”.

Vendor

A third-party agency or an individual who performs a function on behalf of your company, provide services, supplies goods to your company, thereby fulfilling your requirements at a competitive rate with the minimum timeline.

Till a few years back, to qualify as a vendor in the apparel/textile eco system, one had to manage the supply or service on time with right quality within the stipulated timeline & at a competitive cost.  In the current times, the above parameters alone are not enough. Vendors are expected to go beyond these parameters.

Market dynamics

We all know that the market challenges are increasing day by day. Several new brands/retailers are coming in & consumers are opting to buy their products through various means like online & from new/ unknown players. With this varied effect businesses are no longer in control of any consumers. In order to keep the businesses alive buyers are making several efforts like studying the market & customer requirements etc., to service customers to the best of their abilities. However, this has not yielded great results. Consumer behavior & spending capabilities need to be reassessed by respective stakeholders to take the right business approach.

Due to changing market dynamics, buyers are not getting clarity & unable to assure vendors on continuous business support. Since they are in a state of flux, buyers have started expecting more from their vendors apart from acting as a supply/service provider of what is being asked for.

2020

If given a chance, everyone would love to erase the year 2020 from the records as it has created so much disruptions to market & economy as well. Across the globe every nation, organization, individual has felt an exponential impact.

In the present scenario if vendors continue with their conventional approach & expect to become successful, it is practically impossible. Previous definition of vendor in terms of fulfilling requirements with regards to quality, quantity, time & cost has now become a basic, I prefer to call it as self -hygiene for vendors.  Anyone who is unable to achieve this will not co-exist in the eco system of textile/apparel industry over a period.

T20 vendor - redefine

As cricket evolved from Test to One day to T20, it’s time for the vendors to evolve to suit the T20 world.

Vendors who want to be scalable & sustainable in this challenging environment have to redefine themselves. Along with their basic requirements/self- hygiene, vendors need to look beyond the ordinary.

Let’s see what the word V E N D O R means in the T20 world.

Value added services

As a vendor you should provide value added services to your buyer’s by sharing latest market trends & best industry practices which enables the buyer’s growth. Buyers tend to recognize these vendors as an asset & take them along on the growth path.

Efficiency

We cannot keep reducing the prices for the sake of selling or getting orders, the best way is to manage the cost with improved Efficiency. As a vendor if one works towards increased volumes & best manufacturing practices, the benefits will be multifold & can be shared with the buyers too. This will lead to business continuity and growth, rather than temporary monetary gains. This will make you an ultimate vendor in the buyers’ books.

Newness

Offering Newness to your buyer is very important. Developing a product range which is in line with the present market demands & will help increase the buyer’s sales. Even if your efforts rejuvenate their business by the smallest of %,  that is where your success as a vendor lies.

Delight

In today’s scenario it is vendors responsibility to Delight their buyers by sharing hands on information before they ask or follow up with you. Anyone with a proactive approach will get registered in the credible vendor list of the buyer.

Opportunity

Vendors need to look at modern day challenges & new business moves as an opportunity rather than a threat. For e.g. vendors who have been making 100% cotton t-shirts for ages, now willing to manufacture Polyester & blended products looking at market demands are seeing a new business gain.

Responsible

As we all know the entire world is moving towards sustainability, vendors who are socially Responsible & start supporting their buyers towards the successful transition of 100% sustainability will be able to sustain themselves along with their buyers over the time. We have seen in one of my previous articles how colors can be chosen wisely to manage the environmental colors. Having a healthy dialogue with your buyers on that kind of initiatives, creating awareness amongst them & their teams could create a success story for you as a vendor.

Stability

Vendors, who are financially stable & can withstand market challenges without their buyer’s support are the preferred partner in the present scenario. Someone who looks for their buyer’s support to manage their backend investment requirements & their regular expenses continue to be part of the primary vendor list. Though they may be good in other aspects, the buyers are not confident in their fund flow & do not want to take a chance.

Conclusion

Usually Vendors always feel that buyers are pushing them hard & demanding for unrealistic things. We all know today’s world is a consumer (customer) world. It is important to understand that each of us play only a service provider role to end consumers & without them the business won’t exist.

Every stake holder will have their own front end to service (customer) & back end to support (vendor) which means at some point of time same person will act as a buyer & vendor too for different set of people, who must undergo all these challenges as well.

Assume that excellent product quality is offered in correct quantity at a competitive cost at right time. Then Market dynamics & consumer behavior are the 2 important things which creates new & more demands for any buyers. Based on the new demands it is important for vendors to upgrade themselves with the approach of Value-added Service, Efficiency, Newness, Delight, Opportunity, Responsible, Stable, as per T20 vendor- redefine. As per my knowledge the above T20 vendor- redefine suits everyone belongs to the apparel/textile eco system.

 It’s time to rewrite the success story with our redefine approach as

V E N D O R in T20 world.

Hope you like this article, I am looking forward to a lot of interesting conversations, would love to have your feedbacks, views. Do share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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