Big Boxes Retailers to Tabletop: Hand Over Your Playbook
The pressure on the tabletop industry continues even for those that have sold out to doing business with Target and big box stores. The stores can't take cover in these football-field size stores; these stores are now requiring them to hand over their playbooks. Allison Zisko writes in this week's HFN:
Target’s newest private-label tabletop initiative, which has vendors negotiating directly with Target’s sourcing arm rather than its team of buyers, has industry members questioning a potential conflict of interest and facing allegedly increased competition for the discounter’s prized dollars.
During a meeting at Target’s Minneapolis headquarters last month, tabletop vendors were told they now must deal directly with Target Sourcing Services/AMC, Target’s global sourcing arm, in developing private-label merchandise. In doing so, they are required to supply the names of the factories they work with overseas, a practice already in place, as well as their pricing with those factories. Target was supposedly probing for other proprietary information. “They’re asking us for FOB [freight on board] origin cost, for markup,” a source said. “You have to list a breakdown for all the components of the makeup of a product. … They are now involved in factory inspection and in all aspects of the business.”