Accessing Don Mar's Online Price List

Bill Henry-

Brussel Sprout Connoisseur
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Retired from the grind
If you are as frustrated with Don Mar’s (laughable) claim to be able to download all updated pricing from their web site and don’t wish to wait for months for a blurry, wrinkled photocopy of it in 6 point type, here is a down and dirty (if not particularly quick) way of getting it now.

Access the pages you want (Nielsen, in this case). You will be presented with a page that looks something like this.

Picture1.jpg


Click on the right frame (the price side) of the page, “Select All” then “Copy”. Open a new Word Processing Document and “Paste” into it.

You will be left with a humongous sized price list (in blue of all things) which is barely usable.

Picture2.jpg


But, if you show invisible and hidden characters,

Picture3.jpg


you will notice that most of the fields are followed by a “return-tab-return” character sequence. The trick is to change those to a simple “tab”. Pull up the “Find/Replace” window and type in the following:

Picture4.jpg


(for Word users, type in “^p^t^p” (the caret is Shift-6 for most keyboards, I think) in the <u>Find</u> box, and “^t” in the <u>Replace with</u> box. Choose “Replace All”.

This looks better, but each record has two carriage returns and, for readability, you’ll probably want only one.

Pull up the “Find/Replace” window and change the entries to the following:

Picture5.jpg


(for Word users, type in “^p^p” in the <u>find</u> box, and “^p” in the <u>Replace with</u> box. Choose “Replace All”.

Once you do a “Replace All”, the word processing document will be a whole lot more readable.

Picture6.jpg


Change the fonts and the sizing and the color to something you like, get rid of the invisible characters, and you’re good to go.

At this point, since this document is in a tab delimited format, it can be opened in a spreadsheet if you wish (at least, MS Office users can). AppleWorks users must first save this as a “TEXT” file (<u>NOT</u> the native AW word processing format). Once it is in a TEXT format, double clicking it will open it in an AppleWorks spreadsheet.

Just combine or append all of the documents you wish from Don Mar’s silly, user unfriendly tables and you’ve got something usable.
 
Bill:

Thanks for the good idea.

But: In Word, from the Edit menu, select "Paste Special" and then 'Formatted HTML', will give you a copy identical to the screen, no characters or anything to worry about.
 
Thanks Paul,

I hardly ever use MS Office, but I gave your suggestion a try.

Unfortunately, my version of Word is “Word for Mac (OS X)” and doesn’t seem to have any .html formatting options in “Paste Special” other than styled or un-formatted insertions. With only those choices, I (a poor, downtrodden, MacAddict) am still left with having to go through the find/replace routine.
 
They should also be broadcasting these prices to every POS vendor on a timely basis, so you can get it from your POS too.

Looking at ours, it says the last update was from the second week of January 2006.

Mike
 
Since I use spreadsheets for pricing and not a POS, can you tell me how vendors disseminate their pricing info?

Do the POS programs have an auto download (i.e. are you always connected to the source), or do you have to do a manual .ftp? And, if it is manual, how do they notify you that new pricing is available, or are you on your own to check periodically?

Also, do the downloads contain the pricing from <u>all</u> the vendors, or can you subscribe to just those vendors that you use?

Since Don Mar's prices are effective immediately, if I had a POS, I would be ripped if I didn't get this information ahead of time.
 
Bill:

In LifeSaver, there is the "Update" button. Every week or so, I hit it and it downloads the information submitted by the suppliers.

You will see new additions as well cancellations (discontin. frames & mats) that the suppliers have submitted. Actually, it shows you what supplier submitted how many new additions and cancellations.

That alone saves me tons of headaches and work.

PS: The Update button also downloads the latest software updates for LifeSaver.

And yes, you can select what suppliers you want in your POS. So the updates are only for the installed suppliers.
 
Since I use spreadsheets for pricing and not a POS, can you tell me how vendors disseminate their pricing info?
I believe a week before the changes go into effect, they(vendors) email them (as a single database file) to all the pos companies. The POS companies then digest all these files, which are in various formats, and convert them to a common format that works with their POS. Info in the files includes things like item #, width, description, chop wholesale price, length wholesale price, etc. I'm talking mouldings and mats, not other things like hardware and equipment.

Do the POS programs have an auto download (i.e. are you always connected to the source), or do you have to do a manual .ftp? And, if it is manual, how do they notify you that new pricing is available, or are you on your own to check periodically?to just those vendors that you use?

Also, do the downloads contain the pricing from all the vendors, or can you subscribe to just those vendors that you use?
Well, they all have different ways of doing it. Some offer a 1 click button that does it automatically, some email it, some do it automatically at a certain time of the day, some have you visit a special password protected web page to grab the files, some don't provide vendor price updates at all. Some have you download every vendor out there, while others do just the ones you carry.

We use LifeSaver at our shop, which has a one click "Update" button. The UPDATE takes about 30 seconds and grabs any mat, moulding, or software updates applicable for our configuration. It then automatically applies them - complete with a printed list of adds and drops. (so you'll know what to pull off the wall) When you configure the software, you tell it which vendors you wish to carry, and it ONLY gets the info for those. We do this 1-2 times per week, and there are almost always vendor changes.

Since Don Mar's prices are effective immediately, if I had a POS, I would be ripped if I didn't get this information ahead of time.
Generally, we see the new items a few days to a week before the reps tell us about the new stuff. In almost every case, the POS companies get the info well in advance of the price changes going into effect.

Mike
 
Thanks Paul and Mike,

It took me about an hour and a half, but I finally got all of the needed stuff into a usable format. My updated price lists are printing as we speak.

My latest Don Mar invoice did not reflect the price increase, so, I guess, despite the “effective immediately” notice, we’ve still got a little wiggle room.

I have been whining to Dave Campion for a while about the lag time between the announcement of and the actual publication of the data, but nothing seems to get better.

Just out of curiosity, could one of you guys let me know when Don Mar finally has this new information available for your POS? Inquiring minds want to know.
 
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