They seem to be having a hard time getting these discs re-ordered from the manufacturers (they're probably dealing with backorders from the manufacturers, the same way that we are dealing with backorders from them, only on a larger scale).

I guess there's two ways to look at buying these backordered titles. We can either pay more, and get immediately from a store that has them in stock, or we can save $5 per disc, and wait until they become available. It would be nice is Five Star had something telling when a title was due in stock, but that would require that the manufacturers be able to meet re-order delivery dates (which doesn't seem likely).

I'm just happy that Five Star has extended these sales beyond the inventory that they had on hand. Many stores have had sales that only lasted "While Supplies Last". As soon as a title went out of stock, it was no longer on sale.

[Link]

For a retailer, $5 in their hand is better for them than $10 in the other guy's hand...

I have a theory about much of fivestar's stock - since they have so many titles to keep in stock, they order smaller numbers of each from their distibutors:

- larger overall catalogue, smaller inventory = faster turnover = less stock sitting around taking shelf space earning dust.

cheers,

scipio

[Link]

Having had a number of business conversations with various players in this field, I can say that price is often king and many consumers are more interested in price over availability. I suppose that's why Simon Wolf Organization is going with a direct distribution model-if you don't get it straight from them, forget about any pricing advantages...

Tricia, are the distributors getting that much of a break to make them your competitors? IE: without going into too much detail, does Evil Angel offer large enough pricing tiers to allow a distributor to make a lot of money undercutting your prices? (like 500 units at $17@, 2000 units at $15@, etc?) Curious...and waiting on an Evil Angel title at 5 Star

[Link]

(ie minimum order $500 worth of stock, or specific titles have to be purchased in batches of, say, 6, or 10 etc.)

Not to say this is how EA run their distrubution, because obviously I have no idea of their specifics, but the above kind of minimums is not unusual in distribution/retail.

This is where the "One-Stop" type of distributor warehouses come into play, you can order 1, 2 or 45 of a given title, often with no overall minimums, plus you can buy product from many different distubutors from the one source (hence, "one-stop").

cheers,

scipio

[Link]

I’d like to thank everyone for the input on this topic. We pay close attention to our customer’s feedback and we use it as a way to improve our service.

Ken Graham
Five Star DVD

[Link]

2. Evil Angel was 19.95 and is now 22.95 for about 2 weeks and the stock is not gettin better

3. Extreme Associate was 16.95 and is now 19.95. About 60% of the titles are *Out of stock*

4. Some titles like *New Breed 2* or *Caribbean Undercover* are Out of stock for weeks. Why that ?

Don't understand me wrong. I like Fivestar very much. They have good prices and a good user service, but they have to do something with their stock status !

[Link]

Bigdick- I checked with customer service and I see that they have contacted you to explain that your order was split into 2 shipments. This usually happens because our shippers hear a loose disc inside the case and upon inspection it looks badly scratched. Rather than sending out a potentially defective disc we’ll select a different copy or if necessary send it separately. Regardless, you should have been notified before you received your package and I have discussed this with our staff.

Ken Graham
Five Star DVD

[Link]

This cost is usually passed along in the price that a company has to charge for DVD's. If you notice, the companies that do a better job of not running out of stock, tend to have higher prices than the companies that have higher occurrenes of backorders.

WE CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS. Personally, I like the fact that we are given the choice of better prices, with the potential cost of inconvenience vs. more convenience with the additional cost of more money. If every store kept high levels of inventory, we really wouldn't have many choices, all stores would have to charge pretty much the same price in order to stay in business.

If you notice, many online stores selling mainstream DVD's give price discounts to people who pre-order and then they immediately raise their price by 20-30% as soon as the movie is released. This is done because there is absolutely no inventory risk when they buy DVD's for orders that already exist.

It would be nice if more Adult companies were as reliable as Evil Angel. If they all published release dates, AND MET those dates, adult stores would be able to do the same thing.

[Link]

So at least with Evil Angel's stuff, anyone who is waiting for something from FiveStar should have all their needs satisfied shortly.

[Link]