I can’t even begin to remember all of the times retailers have told me that they didn’t have time. Time to consider something that will help them and save them time and money. They need to be on the floor selling. No one sells better than they do.
Retailers generally feel that they can keep their expenses lower by having fewer employees. Big mistake. It is so much better to have enough employees to do everything that is needed to make your store run smoothly than to try to cut corners with fewer employees.
It takes personnel to do all the jobs that need to be done. The cost of labor is far cheaper than the cost of missing sales, shoddy paperwork, moving merchandise around and then, markdowns. Everything takes time. To do everything, you need to be properly staffed. Trying to do without employees means problems.
One of the complaints I get is that it takes time to keep up with my open to buy system. Of course, it seems like a lot of work until they spend some time with it and realize it’s not that time consuming. But since it’s something new, it absolutely cuts into their routine. My come back to those assertions is that perhaps they should hire more people (even though the upkeep on my open to buy plan is about an hour a month).
Retailers try to wear too many hats and do too many things and are always amazed when their money is at the end of the month. The reason for that is simple – it’s sitting in your inventory (and depreciating). If the time were taken with a good open to buy plan, overstocking and markdowns would not be a problem. Merchandise would be more on target and sales would be greater. Turnover will grow and, believe it or not, there would be money left over at the end of every month.
So, consider running your store the right way. Hire more help. Teach them to think like you think, sell like you sell, look for problems to solve and solve them. You will find that the extra expense is paying for itself and actually bringing in more (much more) than the cost. And when you have better help, you’ll be less stressed and do a better job of whatever you tackle.