Over the past few years, a lot has changed in the way of meeting the demands of the industry. Orders have become more customized resulting in less inventory on hand, yet lead times grow increasingly shorter as everyone “wants what they want, when they want it.” We see the number of purchase orders increasing, average order size declining into small production runs, and even more direct shipping requests to your customers for efficiency – all trends we see continuing on for years to come.
All these factors are driving our costs higher and have impacted our company to a point where we have reached a negative balance point and must seek to stabilize these trends by adjusting product pricing and individual accounts where needed. While our last overall cost adjustment to our customers was back in 2013, we do not feel an across-the-board price increase is a good way of doing business as it affects all customers in the same manner. As an OEM supplier, we’re choosing to work with each of our customers to address these concerns on an individual basis.
Valley Design has taken positive steps in the last year to focus our distribution of products to our OEM customers, while greatly reducing access to our products by the refurbished, used, and new office furniture dealers. We believe with a reduced account base of customers who will support us with a broader range of products gives us an ability to provide a more focused and personalized Customer Service experience. With a reduced amount of customers, we’re able to have a clearer understanding of your needs in order to become a stronger and more focused vender for your team.
Thank you for your continued support of our company and our team members as we continually strive to be your table base supplier of choice.
The Valley Design Team