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| SUPPLIER ACCOUNTS - Frequently Asked Questions |
| SUPPLIER ADMINISTRATORS |
| 1. We already have a well-running proform program implemented, why should we consider using ITI? |
| 2. Can we keep our current proform program in place at the same time? |
| 3. What does this cost us to put our proform programs online? |
| 4. How does ITI make money? |
| 5. Can we advertise on the site? |
| 6. How do we get paid? |
| 7. We want our proform buyers to think theyre getting something special, how do we limit the type of buyers that can order from our program? |
| 8. We really want to keep our proform program super tight, what if I only want my authorized retailer accounts and/or specific people accessing our proform program? |
| 9. How do you expect to prevent buyer abuse? |
| 10. What about retailers concerned with proform distribution cutting into their sales? |
| 11. Will ITI inventory proform product? |
| 12. How will ITI keep track of inventory availability? |
| 1. We already have a well-running proform program implemented, why should we consider using ITI? |
| Distribution Control/Flexibility no more on the fly gut instinct decisions on whether or not a potential proform buyer is legit. ITI pre-qualifies and categorizes all potential buyers, making your proform buyer policies a one-time setup rather than an ongoing battle. And these qualified buyer type choices can be easily changed at anytime to reflect changing inventory and/or sales and marketing policies and initiatives. |
| Protect Retailers/Abuse Control - no most effective way to get the most out of your proform program is to really get your retailers support. As long as there are qualified individuals taking advantage of their position to get proform deals on similar product from multiple brands, with those brands none the wiser, and those individuals turning around and selling that product to friends, family, and anyone else, retailers suffer from significant lost consumer sales. Combine that with less than idea paper form controls and it's no wonder many retailers would just as soon see proforms extinct. |
| Beyond buyer limits on individual buyer programs, the centralized ITI marketplace places sub-category (i.e. 3 snowboards/4 pair shades/10 units lifestyle accessories per year) limits on every buyer. Furthermore each buyer is subject to cumulative order limits of 10 orders per month and 40 orders per year. |
| Reach - one of the primary reasons for your proform program is to build the strength and visibility of the brand through associations with opinion leaders and retail employees. No matter how many customer service reps, field reps, and even dedicated proform administrators you hire, they will never have the reach and instant responsiveness of the Internet. Expand the visibility and effectiveness of your proform program and you automatically strengthen your brand. |
| Buyer convenience - buyers access your program pre-qualified, eliminating the hassles of hooking up and follow up calls/faxes with a supplier sales, marketing, and/or customer service representatives to get the proform process started and fulfilled. All order confirmations and updates are via automated emails. How many calls does your average proform order fulfillment process eat up? |
| Cost effectiveness - running an effective proform program requires valuable human and financial resources, you already know that. ITI not only brings you potentially far more qualified buyers, but we bring them at no cost and with no phone calls. No design, printing, and mailing of collateral costs, and no valuable rep, manager, and/or customer service resources are drained to take orders. ITI hosts your site for free, and charges a net 5% (after credit card fees) commission on orders generated, at less than what you'd pay to bring in and fulfill those same orders using conventional methods. |
| Stock control - an online proform program enables administrators to very easily and effectively keeps your product availability up to date. This greatly reduces un-fill able orders and the frustrations and phone calls that result. For a nominal monthly fee ITI will provide this service for you using your internal left-to-sell reports. |
| Market data - get real-time program results anytime with the online inquiry-reporting feature. The earlier you get your product out to ITI members the sooner you'll know what's going to be hot at retail and what adjustments will be needed to your production and marketing plans. |
| 2. Can we keep our current proform program in place at the same time? |
| Not only can you, we recommend it, at least when first starting out with ITI. For most companies the personal relationship between sales reps and key shop employees, and between sales and marketing managers and their industry contacts, are crucial for obvious reasons. ITI takes the pressure off these relationships and allows your people to concentrate on the most important relationships. |
| 3. What does this cost us to put our proform programs online? |
| Supplier administrators have 24/7 access to a simple to use catalog building/editing tool to quickly get your program up. Alternately you can provide the required materials to us and we will build your catalog for you for a setup fee of $50 plus a per-model/style charge as follows. |
| $2 up to 20 SKU's |
| $3 21-50 SKU's |
| $4 51-100 |
| $5 over 100 SKU's |
| For larger programs if you can provide us your product info on an Excel template that we provide you, the cost is reduced by $1 per model/style per the above table. |
| You can have as many catalogs as you wish to differentiate brands and/or product lines. Each dedicated catalog page includes header and side panel areas to use for logos, special instructions, announcements, or whatever fits the format. You can update your catalogs as often as you like, again, no charge and no hassle. ITI also handles all payment processing hosting and expense. |
| 4. How does ITI make money? |
| ITI collects revenues on actual orders generated for suppliers. ITI charges the buyer a $1.99 processing fee for orders up to $100, $2.99 for orders $100 to $300, and $3.99 for orders over $300, which is added to the order total during "checkout". From the supplier ITI collects a 15% commission on the order value before freight, processing fee, and any applicable sales taxes. Note that approximately 3% of this goes to credit card payment processing charges incurred by ITI. |
| 5. Can we advertise on the site? |
| Yes. While we don't place any advertising on your catalog pages, advertising space is available on the search portions of the site. For more details please contact ad sales at ah@influence-tech.com |
| 6. How do we get paid? |
| When an order is confirmed for shipment ITI bills the buyer's credit card and makes the credit to your supplier account for the proceeds of the order minus the processing fee and commission. All supplier accounts are paid out on a bi-monthly cycle, net30, ITI makes payments to each supplier with a positive account balance for the previous billing cycle. Any additional contracted service or advertising fees (future services) are deducted from the account before payment. |
| 7. We want our proform buyers to think theyre getting something special, how do we limit the type of buyers that can order from our program? |
| The key feature of ITI is the ability of suppliers to easily control what type of buyers have access to their programs and what pricing they're entitled. As part of the registration process, every authorized buyer account is categorized by their type; Specialty Retailer, Action Photographer, or Club Team for example, and the action sport categories they have business with, for instance Surf, Snowboard, and/or BMX. |
| For each catalog you activate, you will indicate which specific buyer types within each action sport categories are allowed access to your catalog. For each business type/category you may also designate a specific pricing tier - for example 10% off "base" pricing. These designations can be changed easily at any time to suit your changing marketing and inventory situations. This gives suppliers the unparalled ability to redirect their marketing and distribution targets instantaneously and without any added expense. |
| 8. We really want to keep our proform program super tight, what if I only want my authorized retailer accounts and/or specific people accessing our proform program? |
| No problem, your catalog(s) would be specified to authorize Buyer Type "AR"(Authorized Retailer) and/or "FF" (Friends and Family) only. |
| Each supplier account has the option to activate, individually, these two directed buyer accounts for each catalog activated. Both accounts are account number and password access accounts specifically for the designated catalog(s), managed by the Supplier Administrator rather than ITI. |
| Besides their intended target users, the main difference between these accounts is that; to use an AR account, buyers must still have a ITI Buyer account and enter the site through the normal Buyer login. The buyer then enters the specific AR account and password in the Authorized Retailer option of the Home search page, which then takes them directly to the specific catalog. |
| The FF account however allows individuals that ITI would not typical authorize as a Buyer Account, to access a specific suppliers catalog only. The FF account and password entered on the Buyer Login procedure takes the buyer directly to the specified supplier catalog without any access to the regular search pages to which the regular ITI member has access. |
| These accounts are controlled by the supplier account administrator for each catalog, and can be activated, deactivated, and the password changed at any time. The supplier is responsible for providing these account numbers and passwords to the appropriate buyers. |
| Like regular sales activity, these accounts may be monitored 24/7 by the supplier account administrator. |
| 9. How do you expect to prevent buyer abuse? |
| Buyer Agreement For each Buyer Account a Buyer Administrator is authorized and accepts responsibility for monitoring the use of their account as specified in the Buyer Agreement. Failure to abide by the terms of the agreement or respond to inquiries from ITI regarding possible abuses will result in immediate suspension or termination of their buyer account at the expense of all their employees. |
| Buyer Limits authorized buyers are subject to three levels of buying limits. The first level is set by suppliers on their individual programs. The next two levels are set by ITI and set caps on every product sub-category as well as total order limits per month and per year. For more details see the buyer limits. |
| These limits will be modified as required based on supplier feedback. Note that these limits do not override specific buying limits activated by suppliers on their programs (see below). |
| Ship To Address controls - for each catalog the supplier can specify whether or not they wish to allow for Ship To addresses other than the Buyer accounts address. Forcing orders to be shipped only to the respective retail or other business address discourages non-authorized buyer abuse. |
| Respectively buyer account administrators can also indicate "Ship To Business Address Only" for all orders placed by their account members. |
| Maximum quantities - for each catalog the supplier can set maximum quantities per sub-category for buyers. For example 2 wetsuits per buyer from the Spring/Summer 2001 catalog. |
| 10. What about retailers concerned with proform distribution cutting into their sales? |
| ITI isn't changing the proform concept, which is a legitimate brand-building tool that ultimately benefits retailers by driving consumers to their stores looking for the latest hot brands. ITI is authorized industry access only, and it is the suppliers that ultimately control what industry buyer types, by action sports category, have access to their programs. It is well known that action sports insiders rarely pay full retail for any related products. They will typically follow the path of least resistance to some sort of hook-up. ITI suppliers have a significant advantage in providing that path to these important opinion leaders. |
| Most significant though are the numbers; we've estimated the number of people employed altogether in the Action Sports industry - that includes at least 18 different action sports categories - to be in the 400 thousand range, big enough to support our business if we can reach enough of them, but hardly a dent in the total market which is estimated at over 150 million participants - thus we are targeting less than 2/10ths of one percent of the entire market. We do strongly believe that by providing this benefit to the industry we are facilitating the growth of very active new cross-category participants. These new participants and their friends and family that they draw along ultimately contribute to the overall growth of the action sports industry as a whole. |
| 11. Will ITI inventory proform product? |
| No. While to do so would give us much greater control over our service, it would also significantly compromise the primary benefits we are offering the industry, such as distribution control, full brand reach potential, and a level playing field for all suppliers, and for industry buyers, the best possible selection at the best possible deals. |
| Because we are not owned and/or operated by a large consumer e-tailer, we have no incentive to inventory and/or preferably promote the products of any individual vendors. To be involved in making distribution decisions would simply go against the business practices required to be a truly neutral service to the entire industry. |
| Control over the actual fulfillment of orders provides suppliers the final option for a buyer qualification check, the ability to prevent inventory that is needed to fill a retailer order from being sold through proform, and to add buyer information to their database(s). |
| Brand Reach and Selection - While proform orders are important, fulfilling retailer orders are almost always higher priority. Suppliers simply cannot afford to make excess allocation mistakes with proform products, and as a result must limit the products and their quantities made available for proform orders. |
| Conversely to act as a distributor, ITI would be required to make "purchasing" decisions based on inventory and fulfillment costs and liabilities weighed against "forecast" proform sales for every product supported. Newer and less well-known brands and products would be put at a significant disadvantage. |
| These restrictions severely limit the potential number of brands and quantity of products that would be made available to buyers. Supplier opportunities to broadly expose their brands and product lines through this opinion leader market would also be drastically reduced. |
| Best Deals - As a supplier you are well aware of the high overhead costs involved in distribution. To replicate this simply means much higher operational costs, which would have to be passed on to buyers. This defeats the whole purpose of encouraging industry employees to try new brands and new sports by offering them a deal that can't be beat. |
| We are offering this service with no membership or access costs and no added margins; simply a low supplier commission and a very low processing fee to buyers cover credit card and transaction expenses, as a result our service can pass on prices at true proform levels. |
| 12. How will ITI keep track of inventory availability? |
| There are four levels of inventory maintenance: |
| 1 Passive inventory is automatically updated when items are cancelled as unavailable. |
| 2 Supplier Manual supplier administrator has access to a one-page inventory update page that allows them to quickly scroll throw all items and update availability via check boxes at both the model/style and sku levels. |
| 3 ITI Manual upon provision of availability/left to sell reports ITI will update supplier programs for $.10 per model/style. |
| 4 Automated catalogs can be updated automatically by sending ITI a specifically formatted flat file. Please contact us for details. |