At a time when the supply chain crisis is headline news, shopping becomes an increasing challenge by the day. Because everyone feels the pinch of bare shelves and limited availability, we thought it was important to give our customers an idea of how Swanson’s Discount Vacuum overcomes these challenges to supply our store at 7507 N Second Street in Machesney Park, Illinois.
Our Massive Warehouse
Our warehouse measures about a half a city block in length. As freight comes in, products are organized, inputted into our system, and then we distribute every morning, six days a week to our store on North Second Street. Anything the store might need is readily available in our warehouse. We easily have over 20,000 parts and vacuums in-stock at all times.
How We Keep Products In-Stock
In today’s world, things are constantly on back order. Shoppers increasingly have a hard time buying a new car or ordering appliances for the house. These types of things are all back ordered – sometimes six months or longer.
We’ve seen this supply chain disruption starting in December of 2020. Because of that, we have heavily pre-ordered. That means the inventory in our warehouse is really inventory that will carry us through the next three months. So the orders that we place this week and next week are really for inventory that we’re going to need in four or five months from now.
Online Shoppers Increasingly Turn to Swanson’s
While Swanson’s Discount Vacuum is fortunate to have a vast selection of inventory in stock, that is not true everywhere. Frequently, we hear from customers who have tried to buy vacuums and supplies from other online retailers. In many cases, they discover the item they are looking for is not shippable, even through Amazon, for five to seven business days. Whereas if you walk in our store and we don’t have what you’re looking for on our showroom floor or shelf, chances are we will have it in-store by 10:00 am the next morning.
At Swanson’s Discount Vacuum we have very few things on backorder. If we don’t have what you’re looking for in the store, it’s likely in the warehouse, so we’re not experiencing the same back orders that a lot of customers are experiencing at other stores and websites. We have warehoused for many years but we have certainly adjusted our buying out even further now, so we have things in stock that you just can’t find anywhere else.
