We have all heard the line, "The check is in the mail." We know it's a line and an excuse for not paying someone. What's really unfortunate is that small clothing and accessories lines and designers who are on miniscule budgets find in the beginning often are left hanging for payment when their business (and themselves) depend on that money to survive. Often brands go out of business in one season because a few stores can owe them thousands of dollars which is ultimately their profit that gets put back into the business to grow.
Now there is new website that will allow designers to check out potential store customers before doing business with them- introducing VendorProtector.com.



Founders Kim Leone Olenicoff and Ali Sedaghat l relate Vendor Protector to the Zagat guide for apparel and accessories designers worldwide. Through a proprietary web-based database, Vendor Protector enables designers to rate the stores with whom they do business. The free, searchable database can save designers and manufacturers thousands of dollars and headaches by alerting them to stores that tend to not pay, cancel orders or bounce checks.
Plus Vendor Protector offers a dispute resolution service that provides an easy and affordable option to litigation to collect monies owed from these lemon stores.

Ms. Olenicoff, (founders and chief mediator) is an attorney in California who has owned and run businesses in the apparel and beauty industries for the past eight years, so she understands the industry quite well.

"I know from personal experience how frustrating it is when a customer simply won't pay its bill or offers hundreds of excuses as to where the payment is," she explains. "We anticipate Vendor Protector will make doing business for apparel and accessories designers less stressful because they will know what stores are reputable and which they should avoid doing business with."

VendorProtector is a free, searchable database of retail stores in your sector with whom other designers have done business. Before you spend the time and money getting an order together, you can first search for a store to see what other Vendors say about them-good, marginal or bad in advance of taking an order or before shipping the goods!

VendorProtector.com.








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