Getting the stock in

The decision about who to go with to get our stock is now upon us - and it's come down to a decision between Nielsen Bookdata and Gardners. The latter is one of the leading wholesalers for book retailing in the UK - offering a whole range of services that makes them very attractive for a small independent. However, Nielsen are a little more of an enigma. Since buying Whitakers, they have (I feel) attempted to combine the excellent bibliographic information with TeleOrdering into what might be a very innovative system. I've had several chats with various people in the organisation, and they've been very helpful, although (as they themselves have admitted) they offer so much flexibility in tailoring services to lots of different client sectors, sometimes it all gets a bit confusing. My concern is that - for a small independent, especially one that needs to keep a close eye on budgets initially - Nielsen is a bit of a Rolls Royce system more suitable to larger operations. As I understand it, Nielsen is trying to provide a fully-flexible system of allowing you to order directly from the widest range of publishers (getting round some of the restrictions of a wholesaler) - without having to go to the publishers themselves. This is combined with their innovative data services. However, you have to pay a significant premium over the (essentially free) wholesaler ordering system. We're faced by this decision in part because of our EPOS system (Oscar Book) which integrates with both (or more accurately either) system. So how both systems integrate with Oscar is also something to bear in mind - Nielsen are very much the preferred candidate. We have more information arriving from both companies this week - any experiences of recommendations out there would also be gratefully received...