Saks Inc. reduced the amount of tasks its buyers had to perform in acquiring merchandise from vendors when it engaged in a test of web-based showrooms with suppliers, Rick Shaller, senior vice president of e-business development at Saks, told the Retail Systems 2002 conference in Chicago. In addition, the manufacturers improved their productivity, he said.
Saks established an e-showroom where a variety of vendors could display handbags. Buyers could view the handbags online, looking at individual bags from each vendor. Then, as they made buying decisions, they could view all the bags they had chosen from all vendors in a single window to make sure the assortment represented all the options they wanted to offer. “No longer did the buyer have to come back with a lot of Polaroids and pin them to the wall,” Shaller said.
The e-showroom also allowed Saks to compare various vendors’ offerings and allowed automatic order entry, eliminating manual creation of orders.
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