Retailer-Supplier Partnerships

This chapter aims to prerequisites that must exist for effective supplier-retailer partnerships to evolve. It examines the practicalities of making these partnerships work in the supply chain. The chapter focuses on the logical starting points for building these links between traditional adversaries. Traditional supplier-retailer relationships have been founded not on trust, but rather on exploitation. Whoever held the upper hand used it to gain advantage over their opposite number. Suppliers of popular branded products rationed deliveries to retailers, required investments for promotional activities and pitted customer against customer. Most retailers who have developed sound supplier relationships have started slowly, usually through a limited roll-out with a single or relatively few key supplier partners. Effective sponsorship, the kind needed for meaningful supplier-retailer partnerships, takes the rhetoric and backs it up with tangible actions. Public sponsorship includes openly advocating and legitimizing the initiative throughout all affected areas of the business.