Worked scenario
Stock with a shelf life of three days
Occasion stock does not go slowly out of fashion. It falls off a cliff on a known date, which at least makes it plannable.
1 min read
The cliff
Most retail stock declines gradually. Occasion stock does not. A themed line is worth full price on the day before and close to nothing on the day after, and the date is known months in advance.
That is unusually good news, and most gift shops do not use it. The clearance decision is nearly always made after the occasion, when it should have been made three days before, while people were still buying.
Margin varies more than anywhere else in retail
A greeting card and a decorative piece can both sell for a few hundred rupees and earn wildly different amounts. In a grocery the spread between lines is a few percentage points. In a gift shop it can be a factor of three.
This makes total takings almost useless as a measure. Two days at the same till total can differ by half in what they earned, and the owner has no way of telling which was which without margin per line.
What this does not improve
Buying gift stock is taste, and the system has no opinion about taste. It will not tell you that a line is charming or that it will suit your customers.
What it does is shorten the feedback loop, so a buying instinct gets corrected after one occasion rather than after three.
What changes
- Occasion stock tagged to its occasion, so clearance is planned rather than discovered
- Margin visible per line, in a business where it varies enormously between them
- Evergreen lines reordered on movement, themed lines bought against last year
- Corporate and bulk orders carrying a due date and a record of what was promised
Questions about anything here, or a situation this does not cover? contact@anantatechhub.com