no worries. you were just unfortunate to get caught in crossfire (no pun intended) when a regular troll decided to have a whinge.

cheers .... .... hopefully the shirt ll be with before then ... ha ha aha

No one in uniform will ever get a cross word from me.

I'm pretty certain that is you sent an email to the club they would put you a shirt away for when you return home.

Good luck in the army.

Oh I dunno... traffic wardens?

That's not a uniform. Its work clothes with a daft hat to make the wearer feel important.

No need to get all hissy about it. You said no-one could disagree with your views. I did and put across the other side of the debate. I'm still waiting for you to put across your end of the debate other than just "they should buy enough, they're rubbish". I asked how many shirts you would have bought, since you made out you knew better than they did. Would you like to answer?

I hate these "I am a true fan and you're not" conclusions to threads.

the simple fact is that not having availability across all sizes in the run up to the season is a little amatuerish. Most people will buy shirts at two times - the run up to CHristmas, and the couple of weeks prior to the season upto the first couple of home games.

Most salaried fans will have been paid in the last week - 10 days and it is their last wage before the season starts. I for one, intend buying shrts for me and the kids in the next week or so. I think it is fair to expect availability and choice.

Every shirt bought, from whatever source, is still a walking advert for the BUlls and Its sponsors, so still shows support to the club. The club should be on a cut of all sales, so they will get soem income from it anyway!

ever heard of unexpected demand?. clubs made a mistake estimating number of shirts needed in each size, hardly the national disaster some are making it out to be.

Ok genius, I'll ask you the same question. How many would you have bought of each size?

None of this amiguous b0llocks like "just enough", an ACTUAL figure, since you apparently know more than they do. What exact number would you have predicted the demand was? Bear in mind if you go too far over the actual demand, you then lose all that profit you mention by having surplus stock that you have to either throw away or sell at a loss.

How the f*ck people think the club can accurately guess exactly how many shirts will be sold before the season starts, I will never know. And all this utter sh*te like "well they should buy more than they predict just in case" is about as bad business as you can get.

This is a club that doesn't have the luxury of being able to overspend on things just to make sure everyone is happy. Some people don't seem to be able to grasp that. It's not "amateurish" at all, it's the club trying to make sure they don't end up losing a shedload of money that they can't afford to lose and maximise the amount of profit they do make, so that it can be spent on the side being competitive again.

As someone who has actually had to make these sort of decisions, I can assure people it is far far from an exact science when you are dealing with what is each time a one-off product in a dynamic market. I wonder, too, whether some people realise that the minimum order quantities are in THOUSANDS, not tens or hundreds, and there are significant lead times. So if you get it wrong and order too many, you might be stuck with thousands too many. The sort of money, indeed, the club could spend on a transfer fee, or another member of the coaching staff, or some more marketing support to help better judge demand in future, or...well the list is almost endless.

And not only do you have to judge the toal quantity, but you also have to judge the mix of sizes. And the home/away mix. And at the time of placing the initial order, you may well not have known how successful the Pledge campaign would be.

I guess though that we have a goodly number of experienced procurement managers posting on here, judging by some of the comments?

I do love some Bulls fans who will never hear a bad word said about the club and have such a blinkered view. isaac1 makes a good point and not having any shirts at this stage of the season is amatuerish and if it is going to be several weeks before the shirts come into stock then that means that shirts will not be available for the first home game, which is simply not acceptable.

I do not know how many shirts we should have ordered and neither will any of the fans on this site, but that's really not the point. This is the clubs job, not ours and that is what the marketing team are paid for. The club will obviously have records of how many shirts they have sold in previous years in relation to season tickets sold, they can surely make a better estimate based on percentages. They will also have records of what sizes sold best in previous years, once again basic maths would help them work out how many of each shirt they need to order.