Gillette has many suppliers and relies very much on their ability to keep supplies coming and to be able to adapt to their needs. Gillette has many techniques for keeping supply lines strong. One of with is the Gillette Company's prestigious Omnimark Award. This award is given to a select group of gillettes suppliers annually. "To receive the award, a Gillette supplier must: - exceed $2 million in services or products sold to Gillette; - achieve a 99.5 percent minimum quality rating and a 97.5 percent minimum service rating; - demonstrate proactive efforts to reduce costs, improve designs and offer technological innovation; - demonstrate flexibility in scheduling and responsiveness to Gillette's changing needs." http://www.shareholder.com/csk/news/20000316-14773.htm.
Gillette have a huge logistical task to distribute its product worldwide. In order to account for all the languages and promotional activities of the many markets the company operates, Gillette sends its products unpakaged to various parts of its global market in which they are then packaged to their specific requirements. This is known as a policy of packaging postponement, the goods are only packeaged as they are needed. This helps to keep the information on them upto date and will save the cost of storing the more bulky packaged goods.
Marketing Intermediatories:.
OMD and Universal McCann were Gillette's media planning and buying in North America, Europe and Australia/New Zealand and the remainder of the world. On January 1, 2003 a company called Mindshare were given the media planning and buying task. This company includes "two treatments which are supported by press, outdoor advertising and multi-media." Michael Winkler, Gillette's European Media Director, said, "We were very interested in finding a network that could service us globally. Secondly, we were looking for a partner with state-of-the-art media research and tools to improve the accountability of our media.