The knowledge requirements in the subject of basic sales and marketing are apparently very low in the field of vending machine maintenance.

Because the company I work for has been in the same location for about 40 years there is no one in Senior Management who knows the first thing about buying and selling commercial real-estate. See if this makes sense to you.

First you close down most of your manufacturing and ship that production to other facilities you own around the globe where labor is much cheaper. So far so good.

Now you have a large facility where you used to manufacture that you don't need, and you need to find a home for the 350 or so people on the business side.

So you go out and buy a building. So far it all makes sense, right?

In the mean time you have moved some people from a remote corner of the facility to a newly available space in the part of the building you are still using.

You buy a building. You spend $17 million dollars. The problem is, the building is full. The companies there have leases that are good for more than a year. Now you own a building you can't use and large mostly vacant manufacturing facility you don't use. Suddenly there's less sense.

But why stop there. Sell the existing facility to a property management company and lease back the space you are still using. So now you have a $17 million building you can't use and you're renting space in the place you used to own.

The new owner is anxious to lease as much of the facility as possible and you still have a small group of people in one corner of one building that someone wants to lease. So you take the people in that corner and move them to that remote corner of the facility you moved the other folks out of a few months ago - because you can lease that space cheaper that it what it would cost you to keep them where they were. Even after you factor in the costs of both moves.

So they stuck my department, the company's global marketing management and a few other folks in a remote corner about as far from the rest of the business people as you can get and still be on the property. (It's a five minute walk to a meeting.)

But you want the people to be happy so you set up a lunch room. You put in a sink, a refrigerator, a coffee maker and a microwave. Then a few tables and chairs. Finally a soda machine, and a candy machine.

One of my great weaknesses is a sweet tooth and a high level of fondness for snacks. When they first moved us I thought it was good that the vending machines were so far away. But I was happy when they gave us our own. And apparently I was not alone, there were three items that sold out in the first week. the first to go was a Little Debbie Coffee Cake, then the Hostest Zingers (chocolate), then the Little Debbie Zebra Cake. I had had a few of them, but I certainly had not eaten them all so they were popular, and I wasn't the only snacker looking forward to them being re-stocked.

They came yesterday and refilled the machine. In place of the coffee cake, Sun Chips. Were there were once Zingers, Smart Food Popcorn. In place of the Zebra Cakes, crappy chocolate chip cookies. They will not sell more than 2 of any of those before the next refill. Is it just me? If I was making my living on vending machines, I would make sure that I had marked down what was in each slot. And if something sold out that fast there would be two rows of them the next time. I would also look at what sold out and then run back to the truck and grab some other snack cake. Anything that hadn't sold one package would be gone. It's pretty simple. If you want to sell more junk, put in the kind of junk that the people using the machine seem to like. Don't waste space in the machine on stuff that people aren't buying.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 04:54 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment