Entrepreneurial Vendor Treasure Hunting

“Treasure entrepreneurial vendors and maintain entrepreneurial buying hours: on holidays, or very early or very late. Whenever a vendor claimed to be truly desperate, we offered to meet him at 6:00 p.m. on Friday night. That separates the wheat from the chaff! That’s how Bob Berning made a sensational buy of magnums of Chateau d’Yquem.”

“where I thought we should go: “We want continuous products. Any sane person does. The trick is to have continuous products which are profitable without creating a high-price image.” To create such products, they needed to be differentiated at least in order to avoid direct price comparison. Of course there was no price comparison for almond butter (it was our exclusive) except vs. peanut butter. Products in which we had an absolute buying advantage. For example, we were the largest seller of cheap Bordeaux blanc in the United States. I was willing to continue to indulge in”