Subject:
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Re: Bad Policy #2 (Why all the secrecy, LEGO Direct?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.lego.direct
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Date:
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Mon, 7 May 2001 08:51:03 GMT
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Viewed:
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1328 times
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In lugnet.lego.direct, James Brown writes:
> In lugnet.lego.direct, Marc Nelson, Jr. writes:
> > In lugnet.lego.direct, Tomas Clark writes:
> > > In lugnet.lego.direct, Marc Nelson, Jr. writes:
> > > > And another thing...
> > > I'll let someone else field your other question about US/Europe Shop at Home
> > > because I'm not familiar at all with the feasibility of international
> > > shipping. But it's my impression that the US S@H is set up to ship to
> > > certain areas, and Europe S@H for other certain areas. The extra old
> > > inventory was found in Europe, so they are selling it. Also, I could be
> > > mistaken, but I believ the US has had "finds" like this in the past, which
> > > have been exclusive for S@H customers on this side of the pond -- fair's
> > > fair. Finally, if you read Jake's post yesterday, he did say that they're in
> > > the process of sending some service packs from Europe to the US. Thanks,
> > > Europe S@H!
> >
> > How hard is it to get "set up" to ship something outside of your territory?
> > You charge the customer extra for shipping and then send it to him wherever.
> > It just seems like that would be easier than telling us we can't buy the item
> > until it's been shipped from Europe S@H to US S@H. The same goes for European
> > AFOL's. If they want something from the US, charge them shipping costs and
> > sell it to them.
> >
> > I worked in a bookstore which shipped returns and purchases all over the
> > place. You typed in the address into the UPS program, it told you the
> > shipping costs, and that's what the customer got charged. Now if an 4-
> > location bookstore in Batimore can handle that, I'm sure a multimillion
> > dollar organization like LEGO can.
>
> Simple answer: It breaks the process, and it's unnecessary duplication.
>
> (more complex)
> 99% of the time, S@H Europe is dealing with Europeans who want things
> delivered to Europe. Ditto the other distribution centers. Because they
> spend 99% of their time doing (effectively) 1 process, they have worked it
> and tweaked it and made it the corporate equivalent of instinct. Doing
> things that aren't part of that process slows the entire process down, and
> makes that 99% wait on the 1%. Inefficient, costly, and (my next point)
> stunningly irrelevent (to them).
>
> S@H USA does everything that S@H Europe does, except for people in North
> America instead of Europe. From LEGO's point of view, there is no reason
> for S@H Europe to ship to North America. Why set up those distribution
> channels, why make those extra modules for your software, those extra cargo
> bins in your warehouse, et cetera et cetera - when it's a complete
> duplication of something you're already doing with another part of the company?
>
> LEGO finds some old stock in a inventory clean-up, and dumps it to the
> nearest place that can get rid of it. If you're going to gripe about that,
> then gripe at Wal*mart for not evenly distributing all their clearance stock
> while you're at it.
>
> This ended up coming off grouchier than I'd intended when I started, my
> apologies for that, but I get grouchy when I see people grumbling about
> things LEGO does, without ever appearing to believe that LEGO might have a
> good reason for it.
I asked what that reason was (for not shipping outside territories) and got
the answer at the top from Tomas Clark, basically, "that's not the way we do
things", which is no answer at all as far as I'm concerned. I got a more
detailed answer from Jake McKee with basically the same point.
Maybe the answer to the duplication problem is to just have one big S@H
distribution center in Denmark that ships everywhere -- with 800 numbers in
all the countries to take calls and orders, but everything gets sent to you
from one place. As Jake said, they have the capacity to ship anywhere, but
for whatever reasons, they have everything duplicated several times.
It's not like S@H delivers your package themselves. I just can't see how
putting the address on an order and charging more for shipping is that much
of a realignment of corporate practice. It doesn't make any more work for me
to send something to Ohio than Nebraska. I would think it would save them a
step to send something directly to me and make me pay for shipping than
sending it to Connecticut and paying employees to receive it, store it and
ship it to me from there. But what do I know?
What makes me grumpy is the overly apologist (IMO) attitude that seems to be
so common around here, which leads to any suggestion that LEGO might
actually be doing something wrong being slapped down (especially if it comes
from a know-nothing, non-summit attending young whippersnapper like myself).
-Marc Nelson Jr.
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Bad Policy #2 (Why all the secrecy, LEGO Direct?)
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| (...) Simple answer: It breaks the process, and it's unnecessary duplication. (more complex) 99% of the time, S@H Europe is dealing with Europeans who want things delivered to Europe. Ditto the other distribution centers. Because they spend 99% of (...) (23 years ago, 7-May-01, to lugnet.lego.direct)
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