GIL – The Gerson Companies

Tag: GIL

The Big Push

Posted on February 6, 2018February 6, 2018 by gersonco

I am really glad to be back from my Asia trip – 26 days in total! Truth be told, I combined a family vacation with two weeks of work. I knew it was time to come home when I completely used up my large tube of toothpaste. 🙂

Our year is off to a really strong start. Atlanta, Dallas, and our own Olathe Open House have all been terrific markets. As of this point, I do not have the final results from Las Vegas, but we are seeing really nice increases each day.

The most eye-opening piece of data thus far is that of all the orders we have received to date, customers who ordered last year have ordered an average of 35% more this year. That’s a really big number!

We are quickly approaching the February 9th Gerson International™ order cut-off date for our seasonal program. With only this week remaining, the deadline is coming up fast. A number of our customers wonder why we ask for orders this far in advance of the season, and the one and only reason we have this deadline is because we want to be able to deliver product to our customers in a timely manner.

Believe it or not, our factories are already booking up their capacity for the 3rd and 4th quarters. We source our amazing product from over 300 factories, and after we receive our customers’ GIL orders, we split up every order to separate the items by factory. We will then total the pieces and “cube out” the items so they will fit into 40-foot containers to be shipped to our Olathe, Kansas distribution center. We will receive about 8,000 orders in this program, so it takes us about a week to process our customers’ orders to place with our factories.

I am not trying to lull you to sleep with all of this information, but I want all our customers to understand that if we do not submit orders to our suppliers in this time frame, we will not be a priority to our factories and thus our orders may not be shipped on time. When our orders do not ship on time, we cannot ship our customers on time. This is why we have our cut-off date for orders from our seasonal GIL product lines.

After we place orders with our factories, we spend the next 90 – 120 days cajoling, begging, demanding, and encouraging our factory partners to produce and ship on time. We visit our suppliers numerous times at the start and during production, and we inspect all the product once an order is complete. We do not allow factories to ship any of our orders until we sign off on the quality of the product.

Probably the most frequent request from our customers is that we ship our seasonal program as early as possible, and I promise that we are trying! We have some very exciting news to share this season about something we have never done with our GIL program. Last week, we placed orders with our suppliers based on our fact-based estimates of what we will be receiving by the February 9th cut-off date. Although this is not for all of the sku’s we have in our program, the advanced orders we have placed with our suppliers represents over half of the items in our catalogs.

I do believe there are many advantages for our customers to place orders now. In addition to taking advantage of our great prices, our customers benefit in placing Fall/Halloween and Christmas orders while the product is fresh in our minds from the previous season.

Don’t forget we have many great Gerson Everyday brands which you can order and reorder long after our GIL cut-off date. Our Gerson Everyday product lines include: Handcrafted sculptures from the new and exciting Flint Hills Studio™, fashionable and trend-right products of Lone Elm Studios®, innovative and quality LED products from Everlasting Glow®, and our exclusively designed goods for the home from the GG Collection®.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Best Regards,

Jim

jimgerson@gersoncompany.com

Join Us As We Gear Up for 2018!

Posted on November 29, 2017November 29, 2017 by gersonco

It doesn’t seem possible that we are winding down another year – It just can’t be! As is our most important company tradition, I would like to begin this message by saying “Thank You.” No different than when my grandparents founded The Gerson Companies over 75 years ago, we exist because of our customers and would like to extend our gratitude for our continued partnership. All of our associates, living throughout four countries, embrace our company core value of “Our Customers Matter” and work very hard to earn your business every day.

The Gerson Family / Photo Taken May 2016

2017 Year At A Glance

As we all continue to navigate a quickly changing retail environment, we have much to be thankful for this year. We understand the challenges, and greatly appreciate your faith in The Gerson Companies to partner in your success. In 2017, our sales were even with last year, which is both a good news and bad news story. Every year, we set our goals to include sales increases over the previous year, no different than all businesses. So while we are disappointed, I can’t remember a year that seemed to be more challenging with so many changes to the retail landscape, and I have been working here for 35 years!

In 2017, we accomplished a lot together:

Giftbeat once again featured Gerson throughout the year as a favorite vendor among independent retailers. In its most recent November issue, Giftbeat published Gerson as retailers #1 choice for Seasonal/Halloween & décor.
Evolved and reorganized our Customer Service and Sales departments to focus on enhancing and improving the customer experience.
Reinforced our reputation as the leader in our industry by adding 1,828 new independent retailers to the Gerson Family of customers in 2017. Many new retailers were attracted to the company by Gerson International™ and our Lone Elm Studios® product lines, which achieved a combined 30.1% sales increase this year.

What To Expect in 2018

We will continue to be profitable and reinvest in support of our customers and The Gerson Companies’ future in 2018. Our plans are set, and I am very excited for what the next year will bring! We are introducing in a new brand, Flint Hills Studio™, more new innovative product at great pricing, and new technology to help grow our customers’ sales.

In 2018, our customers will experience:

Specifically designed technology to support our independent customers. G-Commerce, a new drop ship fulfillment program, will be introduced in January to offer an exciting, “no-risk” way to help our customers grow e-commerce sales and their brands.
Our new family members Darryl, Horace, Bella, among many others, will put a smile on your face and dollars in your cash register! Flint Hills Studio™, a beautifully crafted and exclusively designed product line, will debut in Atlanta and Las Vegas this January.
New and innovative designs in our seasonal product offering from Gerson International™ – the industry’s most popular and competitively priced seasonal décor offering. We are looking forward to GIL continuing its double digit year-over-year sales growth in 2018.

We have immense gratitude for our relationships with our customers, and look forward to continuing to improve and become more important to you this coming year. We appreciate the faith you have placed in our company by allowing us to support your business.

Have a great holiday season!

Warmest Regards,

Jim Gerson & The Gerson Family

Spring and Summer 2018 Draws to a Close

Posted on August 29, 2017November 29, 2017 by gersonco

We are just finishing up our Spring and Summer 2018 Gerson International seasonal program, and it’s a good time to begin reflecting on the results. First, and most importantly, thank you to all our customers for having the faith in Gerson to supply your inventory for the coming season!

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We do not know our final sales numbers yet, but it looks to be very positive. Our overall sales will be up, and orders received by customer compared to the year prior looks very good as well, which is a metric we watch very closely. I was very proud of our seasonal product offering and pricing for Spring and Summer 2018, and we were given credit for this by our repeat customers and the many new retailers who joined our family this year. We have been working hard to improve our customer experience, which I believe also helped our numbers for the season. Though we still have improvements to make, I am encouraged by our customer feedback.

An initiative of The Gerson Company this year is to improve communication with company associates and with our customers, and our company blog is a great way for me to personally connect with all of the Gerson family. I would love to hear back from anyone who might feel passionate about the subjects I address, or would like to suggest interesting topics you want more information about.

Even with all the changes our industry is going through, at the end of the day, this is still a people business. We want those connected to us to feel good about our company, and this blog will hopefully help by providing a little more insight into our thinking and company direction.

My contact information can be found below, and I look forward to hearing any feedback and ideas that will lead to a stronger partnership with us.

Best,

Jim Gerson

jimgerson@gersoncompany.com / Direct Line: 913.535.7252