The Benefits of Buying Locally

By Jordie Papa

Image courtesy of Uniform Destination

If you’re in charge of purchasing for a hospital, clinic or doctor’s office, you know the value of comparison shopping.  Today there are so many choices you have when it comes to purchasing medical supplies and uniforms.  Since the advent of the Internet back in the mid-nineties, many purchasing agents started ordering their supplies online.  The reason they did so was to save money.  While I agree that saving a buck is a worthwhile goal, if it entails purchasing supplies from out of state or even out of the country, this may not always represent the best value for the money.  In this week’s blog, I will endeavor to point out a number of advantages to buying locally. ht

You get what you pay for.

Image by Uniform Destination

Sure, it’s hard to beat the prices you find online.  But you’d better know what you’re buying any time all you do is point and click to make a purchase.  Many online etailers offer little or no customer service.  That means if you have a question or a concern with something you’re consider purchasing or something you already purchased, good luck.  To help reduce their prices by a few cents, many etailers are forced to cut corners. This means they work with as few employees as they can to keep down payroll costs.  Some online sellers don’t even own the products they sell online.  They operate by reselling other dealer’s merchandise without ever touching a product.  Try getting one of these agents to tell you the difference between competing brands, even if you can get them to respond to a chat or an email.

Local vendors bring local knowledge to bear that can help you choose the best products.

Take my business for example.  As a purveyor of medical scrubs, I deal with everyone from doctors and nurses, to hospital administrators and clinicians.  More importantly, I am able to give all these people, including each and every member of their staff, the consideration of my years of experience handling numerous brands of scrubs.  I am also able to address all kinds of issues from what kind of material feels the most comfortable when you’re pulling a double shift, to which brands last the longest.  I can also point out several other factors that are vital to buying scrubs that you won’t hate ten minutes after you put them on.

·         Not all scrubs are created equal

·         Not all bodies are built alike

·         Which is more important to you, form or function?

·         How long do you want your scrubs to last?

Image courtesy of Uniform Destination

  

More importantly, I own and operate five stores in North Florida that allow medical professionals to come in, ask questions and try on any of our scrubs to find out which fits and feels the best.  They can also count on my staff to help make sure any scrubs they are thinking of purchasing offer the best value for the money.  That doesn’t always mean buying the cheapest scrubs in the store.  Try getting that kind of information out of an online purveyor of medical uniforms.

Giving back to your community.

When you get right down to it, working on a local level is what keeps many hospitals, clinics and doctor’s offices in business.   That’s because people who live near these medical providers rely on them to keep them healthy and to help them recover from sickness or accidents that affect their health.  Doesn’t it make sense for healthcare providers to give back to their local community by purchasing from local vendors who they know and treat, as opposed to working with an etailer that they have never met?  When you add the benefits of improved customer service, access to product knowledge and highly competitive pricing that area retailers provide, buying locally could be just what the doctor ordered.

Jordie Papa is owner of Uniform Destination with four locations in North Florida.