Your Bridge has a new feature: you can choose if you wish to allow customers to order products that are out of stock. In the past, if the item was on your Bridge Store, it was assumed that the item was in stock. This made managing stock simple. On site: in stock. Not on site: out of stock.
This updated stock sharing system is helpful for brands and indie stores because it allows them show and control behavior based upon real-time stock information--a feature that with an EDI service may cost thousands of dollars a month. Bridge offers this service for free to retailers and brands. They avoid a costly EDI bill and can sell more of what is in stock.
This new feature gives you more control and works with your Smart Products. About 30 Smart Brands share stock with stores on Bridge. With our new features, you can choose to disable allowing customers to purchase Smart Products that are out of stock.
By default, this new feature it is not turned on. It has to be turned on on a brand by brand basis. This reason for this is that managing stock may require extra time and reduce potential orders.
In the example shown, we see the retailer Contemporary Concepts, located in Pittsburgh, viewing a new Juliska product. The product is not in stock. The retailer knows this because, Juliska, which has chosen to share stock with Bridge retailers, recently reported a stock level of 0 yesterday at 11 am.
If the store had not chosen to manage stock, this item would be purchasable by the general public. But, a store may not want to allow customers to purchase an active product with no stock because the item may not be in stock for some time. Therefore, in this example, the store has chosen to manage stock for Juliska. When it chooses to manage stock for a brand, it can control:
whether to show stock levels to the general public
whether to accept back orders (aka allow orders if no stock)
In the case, the store has said that it wants to manage Juliska stock and in particular does not want to allow back orders on out of stock items. With these retailer settings, a general public customer that visits this product will not see a green 'add to shopping bag' button. This will save the store from receiving an order for an item which is active but may not be in stock for some time.
Please note: disabling back orders only affects general public purchases. It does not affect a registrant's ability to add an item to a registry.
If you wish to choose to manage stock for a brand (Smart Brand or not), you will initiate that on your Brand Manager page.
Steps:
1. Please click on "Management" at the top of your Bridge account. On the Management home page, on the left-hand side under "Your Products & Brands," please click "Manage Your Account's Brands."
2. On your Brand Manager, please find the brand for which you choose to manage stock.
3. Once you find the brand, in the column "Manager Stock," please check the box. The software will automatically save your changes.
4. Once you save your changes, a link will appear below the check box that says "Stock Settings." Please click that link.
5. In the floating white modal, you can see and edit your features for that brand.
Once you do the above, if you wish to test your change, please visit the one of the brand's products. You will now see text in this stock area: "You have chosen to actively manage stock...". It will show your settings for showing stock to general public and allowing back orders.