Report on the Mail Order Service

REPORT ON THE MAIL ORDER SERVICE To the Annual General Meeting, CSTM, 2002

Direct sales to some local Calgary Folk Clubs have started off well courtesy of Frank and Sheila Holden. However, a big thank-you must be extended to Gord and Jill Sherret who now have new priorities as they are first time parents.

Orders through the web site picked up slightly but only one has come through in the last five months. Mail orders have declined quite dramatically possibly due to the new supplement not yet ready. I have enough listings for about 3 pages but hesitate to put any new items in stock. Maybe the catalogue should just be a listing of items available with a reference as to where they might be purchased – but this is already being done in the review columns of the Bulletin.

Apart from a few member institutions, individual members do not seem all that interested in the service, and even then sales that are made seem to be mainly for well-known performers, rather than some of the new items that have been catalogued. Also, western performers do not seem to sell in the east, and there are many performers from the east not represented in the catalogue. At times I have requested preview copies from eastern distributors but lately I've been uncomfortable doing this as I don't feel I'm able to justify such a request when sales are low.

I continue to bring in some items that have not been received from an artist, and this decision is based on knowledge of local bookings at clubs and requests from direct sales customers. Generally, these items are available from a west-coast distributor from whom I receive a monthly catalogue. No continuous listings come from east-coast distributors.

Because of the high cost of shipping I like to order multiple copies of a title, or wait until there is a sufficient number of titles to order to make the shipping worthwhile. This results in stock being held in Calgary and if there are fewer sales, then I'll be placing fewer orders.

A general increase in wholesale prices occurs every now and then and there are listings on the web site which need to be changed to reflect this. I do not have the expertise to do this.

I see the purpose of the mail order service to assist in the sales and distribution of performers who do not have major representation in the country. Once a performer graduates to what I call 'one of the biggies' I am unable to get stock from them (the distributor), as our sales and stock are not sufficiently large.

Any responses to this report, or items mentioned in the recent newsletter would be appreciated. I'm beginning to wonder about the future focus in which the mail order service should take -- with the advent of the large scale super (record) retailers maybe the mail order service has already served its purpose.

Respectfully submitted, Dave Foster