Dear FMLers, and slaves to the polecats;
 
I took the advice of J. Matthew Saunders post yesterday, and I called
Jennifer Gracia at Petco, the person who buys magazines.  I have been a
retail buyer, so we spoke the same language.  It seems we are having quite
an impact on her personally, and little impact on the corporation.  Petco
has policies and proceedures that only allow them to buy from established
distributers.  Jennifer stated that she has been calling MF to help them
get set up, but noone returns her calls, anyway, I am posting an e-mail
she sent me.  She asked me to post it to the FML.
 
One positive thing is that Jennifer made it a point to tell me that I could
call MF direct and get a subscription.  I told her that Petco was doing
itself a disservice by not having the magazine there as an add-on sale for
the ferret purchase.  If new owners had the magazine for some answers, they
may not get as many returns on ferrets, and the fuzzies would get better
informed owners.  She agreed with this line of thought ($$$$ speak ya know)
 
* * * * * *
 
 "Subj:   Modern Ferret magazine
 Date:   3/17/00 3:10:20 PM Eastern Standard Time
 From:   Jennifer Gracia (I changed this)
 To:     [log in to unmask]
 
 Ken, I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me regarding the
 magazine today.  As I mentioned in our conversation the situation with
 the magazine is not one intentionally created by Petco.  The distributor
 who was supplying the magazine no longer is in the magazine distribution
 business.  When they stopped servicing Petco we no longer had a way to
 get the magazine into our stores.  We still work with Global/Fancy our
 current magazine distributor and if they pick up the title we can get the
 title distributed to our stores again.  I'm working with the distributor
 now on this.
 
 I've been trying to contact Eric at Modern Ferret for the last two days
 to discuss the situation but no one has returned my calls.  I would
 appreciate the opportunity to voice my side on this and discuss how Petco
 is working on sourcing the product but unless the Shefferman's contact me
 I'm at a disadvantage.
 
 Thanks again for your time and consideration.
 
 Jennifer Gracia
 Buyer- PETCO Pet Food & Animal Supplies
 
*  *  *
 
There ya go folks, I can say, from my experience, that if the Vice
President of Merchandising told the buyer to "Just get it in the stores"
there would be a way found.  Maybe we should try him/her if Jennifer cannot
help us.  Jennifer is reasonable, and she really is trying to help, if only
to stop the calls from 3000 impassioned FML readers!!!  LOL
 
Well, off to fix the corned beef and cabbage....
 
Kens
 
=====
To succed in Life:
 
Work Like You Don't Need The Money
Love Like You've Never Been Hurt and
Dance Like Nobocy's Watching
[Posted in FML issue 2993]