Napier, MSCNewsWire, Friday 10 June 2016 - Stock keeping remains one of industry’s most underrated specialisations. One reason is that until the sweeping changes of the mid 1980s the skill was not needed in New Zealand. The skill was in obtaining your import licence.

Trevor Glogau (pictured) began Liquip Sales just as the import licensing era ended and thus he was neatly positioned for the new era of the independent stockist.Often confused with just warehousing, the third party stockist must combine a number of different skills. Chief among them is mind reading your clients in seeking to figure out their requirements.

If you lay in too much inventory you run the risk of not being able to fund it. Or even if you can finance it, you might find that a technological shift has made your stockpile redundant.

Worse still, if you do not have the part in stock, your client might by-pass you and go direct to the back-door of your foreign supplier.

“If you don’t have it, then you cannot sell it,” reflects Mr Glogau whose focus is on components and parts for the oil, chemical and aviation sectors, especially in things like pumps and filters. He is based in Petone with a branch in Auckland.

He does a certain amount of assembly on site. In the main though his skill since starting the firm in 1986 has been in forecasting what his small yet highly specialised clientele might require him to supply, and at any time.

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