Price Wars..are they hotting up?

Over the last two days I have received a number of communications concerning the price war going on in the hardware and garden market around the world. Many parts of the USA are seeing bad weather delaying the spring rush into the garden. This means that many large retailers have asked nursery suppliers to reduce the price of plants and a discount war is occurring. The only problem is that people are not buying plants in the volume that they should. The product is sitting on the bench and slowly deteriorating. Discounting across the board is not the answer. The news paper Business News in West Australia contained an article by Tim Treadgold on Price Pegging. Price pegging is where retailers maintain a specific price and promote it,often as a loss leader. The hardware stores in Australia are now aggressively introducing price pegging,but also accompanying this with asking for exclusivity from suppliers on specific key brands. How often in the past have we seen suppliers get badly burned as a result of this practise. Garden suppliers in the past had similar arrangements with companies such as Sears.Today, Sears are not even in the garden category. Price Wars will hot up and alas some suppliers and retailers are going to lose out.