Trade secrets
The obvious question is: how? "A lot of it was due to bringing new products to market with aggressive pricing and high stock levels," says Walsh. "Good communication with customers is important as it allows us to plan stock levels around their forecasts. Managing stock levels is probably the single most important thing and some of it will always be gut instinct."
"For example sales of flight stick peripherals tend to ramp up towards Christmas. Every previous year we always ran out of stock at some stage, but this year we correctly anticipated demand and sales went up accordingly."
The good news for the channel in this is that people are clearly still buying. Meroncourt appears to have benefitted from doing the basics well, but the business still had to be there to claim.
Earlier in our discussion Walsh mentions that some of Meroncourt's smaller retail customers are struggling in the current economic climate. We ask what he's doing to help them.
"We've really been pushing the idea of sale or return on some products," he says. "We've been offering discounted starter kits in a selection of products on a sale or return basis, but we've seen no returns so far. Some retailers will also have a web presence like an ebay shop and often make use of our drop-shipping service."
"Negative sentiment is self perpetuating," he continues. "We've been concentrating on what we can do to help our customers sell more.With credit insurance being cut we try, if at all possible, to give customers a discretionary limit. We're also allowing people to pay us via Paypal, which reduces the lag on their credit by up to two weeks.
