In 1998,
my husband's office ordered many file cabinets for his two offices.
The order was placed with a local supplier from a well-known supply
chain, since they were in somewhat of a hurry to equip the offices
for an onslaught of Projects projected for that year.
The order never arrived. After six weeks of waiting
and excuses, only locks for the cabinets arrived at one office. "You
never placed any order with us!" was the response to a complaint. On
producing copies of receipts via FAX to the company's home office,
one more lock arrived a week later. Finally, the better part of over
$1,000.00 was returned for a puchase never delivered.
"It's the company," we decided and began using
another supplier. In two years' time, the other local office supply
company mis-delivered a dozen shipments of office supplies, refused
service, ignored my husband, and other poor sales practices nearly costing him
tens of thousands of dollars in lost otherwise-billable time.
The solution? 'Let's put our favorite suppliers in
one place, on one Site, and keep it open for access to anyone.'
That is what we have done here. CaraMart is not
fancy, but it is at-least one generation better than someone who
just posts anything for which they can get an affiliate agreement.
We have cost-optimization portals, categories of
suppliers we have used and are pleased-with, and the like.
And it is open to anyone. We are not necessarily
affiliates of these outfits -- we just use them and would like our
favorable experiences to be taken advantage of by others. We may as
well provide a 'Mart' that is a generation better than random!
