Have you ever come across or imagined the buyers and the vendors having equal footing right from crop to shop in the textile/apparel Ecosystem? 

I would say mostly NO except for a few. Hope most of you agree with this. 

Before stepping into details of the same let’s brush up on our understanding of the word “vendor” in its simplest form.

Vendor

A vendor is a party in the supply chain that makes goods and services available to companies or consumers. A vendor also known as a supplier is a person or a business entity that sells something. 

A vendor purchases products and services and then sells them to another company or individual.

Large retailers rely on many different vendors to supply products, which they buy at wholesale prices and sell at higher retail prices.

A manufacturer that turns raw materials into finished goods is a vendor for retailers or wholesalers.

Types of vendors

There are several types, but in general, they all fall into any of the below four categories: 

Manufacturer: Manufacturers turn raw materials into finished goods and sell them to wholesalers and retailers.

Retailer: Retailers are companies that buy products from other vendors and sell them to consumers. For example, Target is a retailer that sells home products and home appliances.

Wholesaler: Wholesalers generally buy products in bulk quantities and sell them to retailers. Some wholesalers sell directly to consumers—these are typically known as wholesaler-retailers.

Service Provider: Service providers offer services to businesses and consumers.

Importance of Vendor 

When it comes to the textile/apparel Ecosystem, buyers always have an upper hand compared to vendors where as Vendors play a vital role in giving shape to the buyer’s dream. They invest their time, money, and energy to achieve what was once a dream, which we can call D2D ( Dream to Delivery). In many instances based on text messages, and emails and believing the buyer's words vendors process the orders and take so much risk with the simple belief their buyer will not let them down. 

Imagine this is how much risky and if we are in their shoes we will be doing such things without having a formal PO or documents. It is high time for buyers to understand the value and importance of vendors in their growth and work towards upgrading their relationship into a partnership.  

Vendors are the real force and an effective healthy relationship with them helps buyers achieve their business goals. Currently, the term vendor management is highly exploited by buyers and is recognized as a term used only to help buyers tame vendors for their growth. It is important to realize that the growth of any organization is directly proportional to the growth of its vendors.

Respect and Rely 

On the books of vendors, buyers always hold a special place and they have been treated royally by all possible means and ways. Whenever there is a buyer visit the red carpet treatments have been given to the buyer end to every individual be it from the lower levels to high officials to the best of the vendor's abilities.

I have seen many places and occasions where vendors have been taken for granted in many ways by buyers, most of the time the amount of time they wait for the meeting schedules for the buyers to acknowledge and meet them is one of the classic examples for the above. On the other side if buyers are coming vendors have been waiting eagerly to greet them we have seen such scenarios as well.  

What I would like to emphasize here is the Cordial relationship between these two players needs to be harvested effectively to reduce the risk of supply chain disruptions which is the key challenge of modern-day business. Buyers have come to rely so much on vendor’s market information, an open and loyal relationship between them is important and useful in the long run. This will result in a win-win situation.  

This concept is well understood by the vendors but do the buyers reciprocate the respect and importance they receive? It is well-known knowledge that unrealistic goals are expected from vendors. For instance, buyers tend to hide information when it comes to profit and in the name of negotiation not provide the right cost for the right product. This pushes the vendors to find loopholes often to maximize their profit. 

We say communication is the key and that communication should always be two ways but is this the reality when it comes to buyer-vendor communication? Unfortunately, even today vendors are dictated to and dominated by buyers which are not ethical or professional. 

Ground reality

In any business, some other times be it a company or individual you will be acting as both vendors as well buyers at some point in time to some of the others. When we act as a vendor we expect respect and genuine treatment of importance right, are we giving the same to our vendors when we are a buyer is a question we should ask ourselves? 

Keeping this reality in mind we should start treating the vendors well to the fullest which they deserve for. I am not saying every buyer and individual is not valuing the vendor, this applies to the individuals and the companies who ride over the mercy of this attitude with the vendors.

One thing we all should remember is that in challenging situations like the PANDEMIC, every buyer could overcome and exist because of the support extended by vendors whether they liked it or not still they have been the real force of the business to manage the financial burdens imposed by buyers as and when market slow down happens. Still, they understand and try to align as much as possible to the best of their abilities based on the merit of the challenges thrown by the buyers.

They act as brand ambassadors for organizations or individuals as well. The market will take the inputs of the vendors and behave suitably with those buyers as well as individuals based on the credential feedback they received through the vendors. I am sure you all agree with this.  

“It is better to be looked over than overlooked”. 

Most of the time vendors have been overlooked instead of looked over which is an important point to realize and revisit which is the need of the hour requirement.

Ideal ways

In this article I have not conveyed anything new, all these are very well known to companies and individuals like us, however as a buyer are we giving that space to vendors which are ideally needed for the success of the crop-to-shop textile and apparel supply chain. In a nutshell, buyers must understand that the entire ecosystem will collapse without vendors and must provide the deserved respect and equal importance to them. As we all know Challenging days are ahead, unless we take the collaboration route we find it very difficult to run the show, for which the starting point is the RESPECT and RELY approach.

Vendors and buyers bring a lot to each other's table, they provide important information to each other and it is always advantageous to work in a collaborative mode. Both players need to have an open and equal communication space to achieve greater success. 

Hope you liked the article. 

Let’s start changing the way we treat our vendors from OVERLOOKED to LOOKED OVER …

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