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The first 4 months of 2008 have been the busiest time for price changes ever recorded by Luckins, the Electrical and Mechanical Services industry-standard source of product and price data.
With the majority of major manufacturers issuing new price lists, the volume of price changes recorded and issued by Luckins between January and April 2008 has grown by 35% over the same period in 2007.
This puts more pressure on Wholesalers and Contractors to maintain the database at the heart of their sales, purchasing or estimating software. Failure to do so may result in selling products at out of date prices and consequent erosion of profit margin. Most wholesalers and thousands of contractors rely on Luckins to aggregate, enhance and provide the data required to carry out this task.
The choice of suppliers and products available to the Electrical and Mechanical Services sectors also continues to increase. Last year a total of 45 new suppliers were added to the Luckins master database as more and more suppliers recognise that inclusion of their products and prices in the Luckins database (and hence in their customers’ databases) is an essential piece of the marketing jigsaw.
Luckins have invested in both staff and systems to meet this increased responsibility to its customers. Suppliers must also take responsibility to ensure that adequate notice is given about forthcoming price changes and new product launches.
Luckins’ Managing Director, Donna Ward, commented: “With the increased volume of price changes and new products it is vital that suppliers work closely with ourselves, ensuring that their products are available on the database when their customers want to buy them and that we receive details of new prices in time to issue them by the time they take effect. Luckins’ Commercial and Supplier Services teams have invested a large amount of time over the past two years meeting with suppliers to ensure these requirements are fully understood. This has resulted in a significant improvement in the quality of information received from those suppliers and consequently the quality of service provided to our mutual customers”.
About Luckins
Luckins (Trade Service Information Ltd) is the UK and Ireland’s leading specialist in product and pricing data services and related software applications for the Electrical and Mechanical Services (including HVAC and Plumbing) sectors.
Luckins’ customers include national, regional and local suppliers, distributors and installers throughout the UK and Ireland including most of the major companies in each sector.