As ideas go, it was simple enough. But in 1986, it was also revolutionary: under the "bon prix" brand, the Otto Group launched a new catalogue concept which allowed customers to buy fashion, home textiles and accessories at rock-bottom prices.
Good quality at especially low prices was an unprecedented concept in German mail order retail, and meant a host of new challenges for the buying department. It quickly became clear that Asia offered ideal conditions for meeting these challenges. OTTO International, which had already been supplying Asian-manufactured products to the European mail order sector for 25 years, proved to be a vastly experienced and invaluable partner.
An international team of product and procurement specialists very quickly lined up a number of reliable suppliers. These suppliers faced a tough task: to live up to complex European quality requirements and tough deadlines while also being able to offer their products at very low prices. To safeguard the quality of each and every product, a quality inspection procedure was specified, to which every supplier had to comply. At the same time, highly qualified textile and clothing engineers assisted bon prix in developing suitable concepts for the ranges. A team of merchandising experts provided active customer service, acting as the point of contact between bon prix and the suppliers.
The new strategy quickly paid off. Thanks to the unique, close cooperation between OTTO International and bon prix, the bon prix procurement operations became a great success story. There were many reasons for this. Its very close cooperation with strategic suppliers made it possible to reduce replenishment lead time for entire groups of products to under 30 days, and resulted in extremely favorable wholesale terms. Product quality was consistently high and provided good value for money. A speed-to-market concept was developed specifically for Internet retail and special catalogs. By bundling development work, the concept allowed for producing small lots of new items in a very short time, with minimum input necessary from the customer. Finally, bon prix was able to shift all time- and staff-intensive processes in the workflow to the OTTO International team in Asia, resulting in considerable cost benefits. A particularly productive form of cooperation was born, from which both partners benefit to this day.