Happy suppliers means happy customers

The festive season is upon us and it’s around now that I take an annual review of who’s helped me out this past year and clearly, no business can operate without its supply community. Our fabulous experience suppliers who deliver on our brand promise every single day are critical to RedBalloon’s success.

Establishing and nurturing great supplier relationships (our business partners) can make the strategic difference to a business. I can recall working at Ansett Airlines — many suppliers had to wait for months to be paid, yet were asked to perform beyond expectations at short notice without proper briefs. Contrast that to when I moved on to Apple who treated their suppliers as if they were part of the team – inviting them to strategy days and including them in social activities. Apple’s suppliers willingly gave discretionary effort…

Fast forward to now – and I am constantly being asked “how is retail”?  One thing I do know is that without great supply and logistics no retailer is able to deliver a great customer experience.

There are new players coming to market, old one’s leaving — retail is now all about change. In store or online, it is about relationships and building customer connection. However all customers are not the same. Some want intimacy and nurturing whilst others want to transact quickly. Other customers are looking for a deal… and some to have their gifts curated. That is why we have to look carefully at the customer journey and have a broad appeal — yet be the absolute authority on what we do.

Our job at RedBalloon is to deliver hundreds of thousands of customers to our business partners. To find customers, create relationships and ensure with every gift we give a little bit of Australia.

My theory has always been that business partners are critical to RedBalloon’s success and the execution of our brand promise. They are the partners in our success – and they as a result must win hands down too. We now represent thousands of small businesses around Australia and New Zealand and I intend to ensure that each of them is commercially successful. #OneforAllAllforOne

This was originally posted on naomisimson.com