January/February 2008

Every day, in some corner of the uniforms market, buyers like Lori Magurany receive the unwelcome news that an item they had counted on as part of their uniform program is being discontinued.

The news may come in a letter, e-mail, Web post or phone call from a sales rep or distributor, or, on occasion, even from the supplier itself. But there are also times when the news doesn’t get delivered at all, and the buyer doesn’t learn the item is being discontinued until it tries to place an order.

Whatever the circumstances, discontinued items usually mean two things for buyers – a headache, and lots of wasted time trying to find an acceptable replacement.

Despite what buyers and distributors may sometimes think or feel, decisions to discontinue items are not made to spite them. There are good reasons for discontinuing many items, and in some cases it will turn out to be in the buyer’s (or wearer’s) best interests. With a better understanding of how decisions to discontinue items are made – and a frank discussion of what can be done to make the consequences of those decisions easier to manage – the damage done to uniform programs can be kept to a minimum.

In her struggle to find an acceptable replacement for the Eton jackets worn by servers at this private dining club, Lori Magurany has come close, but so far has not found the proverbial cigar.

“I have seen similar jackets, but ours have black banding at the cuffs to hide stains, and four ‘onyx’ buttons,” she says. “Others I’ve seen have solid color sleeves and three fabric-covered buttons.” The button issue is not a big one, she adds. “Ours are all falling off anyway and could stand to be replaced. Besides, no one should notice whether the jacket has three or four buttons,” she says. “But the cuffs are a big deal. I’d like to avoid paying someone to sew on cuffs if I can.” [Editor’s Note: Uniforms did help Magurany find replacements, though the exact mix of colors and features are hard to come by. See Ask Bob, p. 16]

She has had a couple of other factors working against her, too. Prior to learning that her server jackets were being discontinued, Cintas had begun shuffling reps in her territory. As a result, Magurany felt like no one was “taking ownership” of her situation, and communication about the jackets was not the best. When the St. Louis Club was finally alerted to the discontinuation, she tried to buy additional jackets to keep them in reserve, but almost all the most popular sizes were already gone.

“The only size we could get was a 3XL, and men’s sizes are just not practical for female employees,” Magurany says. “You may be able to take it in here or there, but rolling up the cuffs? That just doesn’t cut it.”

Adding to her tale of woe is the fact that many distributors are now embracing more of a “bistro” look in their chef and server wear, and so there are fewer and fewer traditional server jackets to be found. The simple truth is that the Eton server jacket is not as popular a style as it once was.

“Fashion has a cycle, and when that cycle starts to go down, you want to be able to offer a new style that is fresher,” says Andrea

Engel, vice president of merchandising for Broder Bros., a wholesale distributor of uniforms and corporate apparel. “You need continuity in basic styles, but you don’t want continuity in newer products. Part of the reason you carry a lifestyle brand like Adidas or Champion or Columbia is to offer the most technologically current, the most style current items you possibly can.”

Engel says she sees an interesting dichotomy in the uniforms business. “Customers always want to see new products,” she says, “but they never want to see old items go away. It makes it challenging.”

So does the current trend of offering large uniform wardrobes with lots of different styles for employees to choose from.

“In the end, all they do is reduce their buying power,” says Kim Cooper, vice president of sales for iD by Landau. “When you have 25 items vs. 10, your overall sales are the same, but you’re spreading it out over 25 styles, so you lose purchasing power on some of those items.

“When you offer so much, you wind up having to discontinue items because you guessed wrong somewhere along the line. We all have those nightmares – where you thought an item was going to be a best-seller, and you put it on the cover of your catalog, and it just didn’t sell. Right now I’m losing sleep over jackets. I keep thinking, ‘Oh dear, my grandkids are going to be wearing these.’”

Buyers may be part of the problem when they insist on seeing lots of new items with no expectation that older ones will disappear, or when they assemble large uniform wardrobes with lots of different styles. But suppliers and distributors need to see themselves as part of the solution, especially in terms of how these decisions are communicated. The timeliness of this communication, and the assistance and service offered in the transition from discontinued items to new items, often makes all the difference in how these decisions are received.

Consider the sudden exit from the resale market by H.D. Lee in 2006 – a decision many distributors still point to as a case study in how not to handle discontinued items.

“They got the booby prize for the stupidest marketing decision of the year,” says Nathan Mag, owner of Mag & Son Clothing, a New Britain, CT-based uniform dealer. Mag & Son had begun selling lots of golf shirts and sweatshirts to industrial customers that wanted nicer items to wear to trade shows.

“They had items no one else had, like a 9.5- oz. hooded zip-front sweatshirt,” says Mag. “We spec’d Lee 99% of the time because it was a quality product. Then we wake up one day and get a notice that they’re withdrawing from the resale market. Now everybody had to scramble around to find these items. It was a horror show.”

It wasn’t as if larger customers received more notice, either. “That decision came as much of a surprise to us as everyone else in the industry,” says Andrea Engel of Broder, which had been a big Lee customer. “We had just published our 2007 catalog when they announced their decision.”

Engel says a number of her customers really missed some popular Lee items like a heavyweight fleece. After exhausting “every possible channel” to try and find them, Broder this year has begun offering a 12 oz. Fruit of the Loom fleece instead.

“There will always be situations like an H.D. Lee that you can’t plan for,” she says. “If it’s a ‘vanilla’ commodity-type item, it’s not a big problem, but for more specialized items, you need to have other options available, and offer multiple choices in each product classification.”

The lesson for other suppliers and distributors? Be proactive.

“I used to work for Outer Banks, and they had a software program that told them exactly who still had a particular item and where they could find it. They were really good about letting customers know when an item was going to be discontinued,” says Landau’s Kim Cooper. “We have a similar program on the medical side of our business, since they sell so much at retail. We give at least six months notice, and we let the customer know who still has some of that item left.”

Cooper says her company will continue to make a discontinued item just for you –if the sales justify doing so. “A good benchmark is the percentage of total program sales that item represents,” she says. “If an item is 10% of your program, we have to take that seriously. But if it’s 1% of the program, or less, then it probably needs to go.”

Sales velocity is only one of the factors most suppliers and distributors consider, though. “We don’t just draw a line and say, ‘Everything below that line goes,’” says Engel. She also considers where the product is in its life cycle, whether there is a better value available, and changes in the sourcing of the item (as in the Lee situation).

But when it’s time for an item to go, suppliers and distributors need to look for ways to make the transition as painless as possible. “I’m already starting on 2009, and trying to identify items that could be discontinued,” Engel says. “If those items are part of a customer’s program, they’ll typically buy everything they think they need, or else we help them find a substitute.”