Thirty shops in a lane and one memory to hold them
Textile selling is a sample bag, a crowded lane and a long day of short conversations. By the twentieth counter the details of the fourth have gone. The buyer who was genuinely interested in a quality, at a rate he almost accepted, becomes a vague feeling about a shop somewhere near the corner.
A sample without a record is a gift
Swatches leave the bag constantly and rarely come back with an order attached. Recording quality, rate and date against the buyer turns a follow up from please consider our fabric into a question about the specific lot you took on Tuesday. Only one of those two calls gets an answer.
Dormant buyers are the cheapest revenue in the market
A buyer who ordered every season and then stopped is easier to recover than a new one is to win, but the drop is invisible in a market rhythm. Last visit date and last order date on every buyer make it obvious, and a morning of calls down that list usually pays for the system.
