Why Suppliers Matter

I am a huge fan of Cloudveil Jackets“ borderline obsessed.

However, I recently encountered an interesting occurrence that highlights the necessity for good relationships with suppliers for businesses of all varieties.

In Cloudveil’s fall catalogue, a new jacket called the Wild Wooly caught my eye. What I liked about the Wild Wooly was that it could simultaneously fly as city-business-acceptable coat, but still retain the core engineering of a tough Teton valley tested piece of gear.

I decided I wanted one. First I went to Cloudveil online“ no Wild Wooly. Then I searched Google for ‘Wild Wooly.’ Again, nothing. As a last resort I emailed Cloudveil and received the following response two weeks later:

The Wild Wooly Jacket is an item that will not be available until January.
We initially anticipated that jacket to be available at the beginning of the
season, however, there was a delay in the production that we were not made
aware of before our catalog drop.

Here is the Wild Wooly in the catalogue:

cloudveil

How many other people do you think tried to order this jacket and found it doesn’t exist? Do you think a large percentage will be willing to wait until January or February and then buy it? Or, do you think these customers moved on and purchased something similar from a competitor like Patagonia, REI or the like?

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