By Diane Crosby

Children may have visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads, but I have something completely different going on in my brain. I have visions of Fudgies, Keebler Wedding Cookies, devil’s food cookies and a particular caffe mocha haunting my dreams. What do all these treats have in common? They all have gone the way of the dinosaur. These are yummy things I loved, and now they are no more. In fact, I could make a much longer list of products, things I purchased regularly, that have disappeared over my lifetime. For some, there are reasonable substitutes. For those special ones mentioned here, no equivalent product exists.

This extinction phenomenon of items is nothing new. Companies make products as long as it is profitable to do so. Yes, they get us hooked on something; then they cruelly remove it. There seems to be no shortage of new tastes and iterations of brands. Don’t get too happy with that innovative flavor of candy bar or chip, though. It will be gone soon! The pandemic exacerbated the issue and sped up the process. Suddenly, even common items like toilet paper were hard to come by. Products disappeared in a flash instead of a trickle. 

We see the same process ongoing in our public safety store. It happens in two different ways. Sometimes a start-up company will come out with a hot new product. Everyone is buying it. Then the company may go belly-up for reasons unknown. The demand remains, but there is no supply! We find ourselves apologizing to customers again and again when our shelf is bare. “I’m sorry, but they don’t make that anymore,” we bemoan. One of our hottest selling items was an import we had been stocking for decades. At a point, the vendor chose to discontinue it. When this happens, all you can really do is search for the product online to see if anyone else has it, or possibly get someone to manufacture it for you!

Another reason products disappear is when a large vendor changes styles or revamps inventory. I have not been in the boardrooms of such decisions, but I would be curious to know how it happens. I imagine an executive saying, “Sure, this is a great selling product, but we are going to let it go and try something completely unproven!” Colors disappear or change. Size runs become more limited. Even packaging updates can disturb our supply. 

A recent challenge concerned a huge vendor that was bought out buy a bigger one. The changeover disrupted supply for months. New management will make decisions to change product lines and revamp logos and packaging. Any leftover inventory we have will soon appear pitifully outdated and, thus, not worth as much. Those items must often be put on sale. Part of our job is to help transition regular customers to other appropriate lines. It is an issue with ripple effects, though, because customers must often change the specs on their needed products if the ones they specified are no longer available. 

Obviously, things change. Change has always been a part of the economy, but it does seem like it happens at warp speed these days. We don’t see fleets of Ford Model Ts or Edsels traveling down the interstates. Improvements are made. Technology advances. Where we once had pouches for large, clunky cell phones on our walls, we now have sleek ones, though those are also ever-changing. There was a time when our state flag seemed to morph annually. We had quite a time finding what we needed, and vendors were irritated with trying to keep up. Sometimes the demand is the issue! Customers want what they want. 

When your store vendors revamp, go out of business or quit making a popular item, it leaves your shelf empty, your customers angry and your ordering out of whack. If you have a good relationship with your vendor rep, you may be better able to plan ahead, order up on stock that may be going away and make a plan to switch to another brand. It’s a juggling act that seems to be here to stay. 

In just the past week, we lost a product for the second time. About twenty years ago, we discovered a great gift item for our customers. You have likely seen the popular acrylic tumblers with stitched artwork between the layers. We agreed with the manufacturer to send patches to them, and they would insert them. All went well until the company reconfigured the tumblers, and our patches would no longer fit. We hunted for a competing manufacturer and found one! Since that time, we have happily done business with the second vendor. This week, we gathered our usual batch of patches and wrote up our order. Because the company had previously moved, we called to make certain we had the correct address. There was no answer. We emailed. Our order bounced back.

It was a mystery what had happened to our great vendor. Investigation ensued. We looked on the Internet to see who else sold that brand of tumbler. We tried calling several of their other customers. No one knew what had become of this vendor! We are now in the process of finding a suitable replacement. We will research tumblers as well as go back to the original vendor to see if anything has changed. It is truly disheartening when an excellent product is lost. 

Part of running a store is being flexible and letting go when an item becomes extinct. That’s easy to say and can be hard to do. For my part, it is especially difficult when it comes to Fudgies and wedding cookies!

 

Diane and Wiley Crosby own Red Dog Outfitters in Forsyth, Georgia. They work hard to make sure they have a variety of products for their customers and find adequate replacements when an item disappears!