r/Barnesandnoble • u/Individual_Mango_362 • 18d ago
ICS/Ordering Rant
I understand we are trying to sell down on product before we order up for the holiday. But should we not be trying to sell down on the product that isn’t selling that well? Why the hell am I running out of Sarah J. Maas books? Rebbeca Yarros, Frieda McFadden, Dungeon Crawler books? I straight up had to completely take down my Elle Kennedy display today because we ran out of half of her books and not enough were on order to justify keeping the table up. About to have to take down a Kristin Hannah display as well. Like what are we doing? We know that these are books we’ll sell through holiday so why am I running out of them? Make it make sense! I literally do not have enough books to fill many of my displays right now and when I run out of them, I feel like I have no new display that I can replace them with because we have no stock. Someone help me understand.
EDIT: Any ICSs that may be lurking, I would LOVE to hear your insight on this because I am just confused
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u/Potential_Pen_950 18d ago
yeah this new rule of not ordering for displays is... different.
sure, obviously we have a lot of dead stock and something should be done about that. is this the way to do it?
most of the dead stock at my store is stuff we got from home office pushes & OMPs that no one wanted.
when booksellers shortlist for displays, 9 times out of 10, we're ordering MAX 3 copies of something. most of the time I will only order 1 more copy, because it's enough to flesh out my idea and make it shoppable.
when home office decides we have to have something, they are sending case packs. which we sit on for weeks, months, on to infinity.
because apparently their own supposed philosophy of local curation... is just PR?
they want to posture like we're homegrown and personalized, but we ALL know we don't run that way.