Posted in Growth, Psychology on the 20th October, 2016 by

You have items sitting on your shelves and in your storeroom which have been there for years. This is dead stock. Please note even the best run companies have about 20 to 30% of their inventory as dead stock.

It is easy to dismiss those items as just filling space (which can be useful sometimes) but they cost a lot more than you think:

  • warehousing. If you are large enough to have a warehouse, you know the value of each square meter of space. If it is filled with stock you do not sell, you are wasting money.
  • cost of money. You have paid for this stock and you may have had to borrow to buy other stock. Which means this dead stock comes with interest…
  • shelf space. Your dead stock is taking the shelf space of items which could sell a lot faster. Maybe your dead stock is in prime space in your shop.
  • insurance. Your dead stock is still valued and as such you are paying more insurance because of it.
  • discount. You may have to discount the stock to get rid of it, which usually means selling it at below cost price.
  • admin cost. The more dead stock you have, the more time you spend counting it, moving it, inventoring it, etc… All this equates to a lot of time for no end result.

 

 

 

Posted in Growth, Online on the 18th October, 2016 by

Nowadays customers are used to browse online catalogues. They use their tablets and phones to gather information before making a purchase.

This is true even if you cater for a local customer base.

In order to make sure they commit and do not simply take a chance when seeing a product they like on your website and hope you will still have it next time they are visiting you, make sure you offer click and collect.

It also helps your inventory and cashflow as payment is taken at the time of order even if they collect days later.

Posted in Growth on the 20th September, 2016 by

You know what sells in your shop.

However, do you know if you are selling all the items you could? Do you know whether other products would not sell better?

Your suppliers are a well of knowledge.

Ask them for a best seller list of their products and suggest they recoup the information with your orders from the past 12 months.

You will immediately identify which products you should be offering and which items are specific to your shop. You can then research the reasons why and target the customers with extra lines.

Posted in Growth on the 19th September, 2016 by

Nothing can beat the convenience of browsing the web from the comfort of the living room. However sometimes, once the customer has found what they are looking for they want it now or do not want to pay shipping.

Offer Click & Collect where a customer can simply order and pay online and choose to collect the item from your shop.

This is very easy to setup, requires minimum organisation in terms of logistics if you store already carries most items and is a great way to get the customer into the shop where they may spend more.

Posted in Growth on the 8th September, 2016 by

You source a product, you develop a marketing approach, you find a customer, you sell the product.

Next you get 10 times the same product, use the same marketing approach, find 10 customers and sell 10 products.

At this stage it is easy to believe the next step to be: Find a new product.

It is not.

You need to do more of the same unless your marketing has already reached 100% of the potential customers.

Have you reached all your prospects yet? If not, carry on as it is faster, cheaper and more efficient: every time you sell another one of the same, you get better at it.