SUMMER 2016

148
THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINK
JOE DYSART TURBO-CHARGING YOUR BLOG: 10 ESSENTIAL FREE PLUG-INS FOR FASTENER DISTRIBUTORS from page 108
•Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (https://
wordpress.org/plugins/google-analytics-dashboard-for-wp/).
Once you’ve signed up for a free account with Google
Analytics, you can use this plug-in to display Google
Analytics reports on your Wordpress Dashboard. It will also
insert Google Analytics tracking code on all your blog pages.
Data you’ll have at your fingertips includes how people
are interacting with your blog once they get to your site,
where they came from, what search terms they’re using to
get to your blog and more. (Rating 4.4 out of 5).
•Jetpack by WordPress.com (https://wordpress.
org/plugins/jetpack). Jetpack is a popular suite of some
of the most popular tools Wordpress bloggers are looking
for to get the most from their blog. You may find other,
individualized tools that perhaps do a specific job a bit
better than Jetpack. But if you’re looking for an easy,
introductory, all-in-one suite of the tools, Jetpack is a good
bet.
One of the most powerful tools in the arsenal is
Jetpack’s Custom CSS editor. While pro Web designers
use Custom CSS editors all the time to make changes to
Wordpress Web sites and templates, Custom CSS editor is
also accessible to the novice.
Essentially, Jetpack’s Custom CSS editor enables you
to make very minor changes to your Wordpress blog -- such
as changing column widths, changing font sizes or changing
colors -- without compromising the integrity of your blog’s
underlying code.
It’s able to do this by helping you create short snippets
of code that ‘sit on top’ of the code that comes with
Wordpress, and ensures the new code you create has
priority over the original code.
The reason the Custom CSS editor is so killer: If you
make an minor code change that does not work for some
reason (say you change the size of a font and instead your
blog disappears from the Web), you can simply delete what
you did with Custom CSS editor and all will be forgiven --
your Wordpress site won’t break.
More than 35 tools currently come with the Jetpack.
(Rating: 4 out of 5).
JOE DYSART
ROBERT FOOTLIK TAKING ANOTHER LOOK AT INVENTORY from page 114
Even worse is purchasing on the basis of rumor
instead of fact. This happened in the Office Products
Industry some years ago when it was rumored that
there would be a “file folder shortage.” Every dealer
overbought to beat the shortage and then sat on this
inventory for over a year when it turned out that the
rumor had actually created the shortage. Similarly a
guest on a late night TV program joked that the next
shortage would be toilet paper and 24 hours later most
stores had sold out of toilet paper.
The lessons from these benchmarks are clear. Over
reaction can create the worst conditions and laying in
too much inventory can be financial and operational
suicide. This does not mean that you should ignore
an opportunity: but always consider the down side
as well as the optimistic ideal. Even is you have
the money to speculate, is this going to negatively
impact the operation? Consider obsolescence, product
deterioration and space/flow problems along with the
economics. USPS Forever Stamps looked like a real
bargain when the price rose to $.49. Now it’s $.47 and
we lose 4% on every letter.
The Bottom Line Is?
Don’t be in a hurry to increase inventory depth there
are always consequences to having too much of a good
thing. Consider expanding the inventory first to adding
new product lines both to create a wider market and to
take advantage of the demise of niche competitors. Fill
the vacuum and become the first call a customer makes
and put in place the mechanisms to detect changes in
the entire world that will impact your bottom line now and
in the future.
And most importantly maintain your operations
in perfect condition physically, operationally and with
Warehouse Management Systems that can be trusted.
The old saying that: “You can’t sell off an empty cart.”
still rings true; but far worse is having a cart where you
can’t find anything or price the goods below replacement
cost.
ROBERT FOOTLIK