AGENT PROVOCATEUR
Summer Sales? T
hey tell us in the adverts that some travel companies are selling off holidays at ridiculously low prices to attract last minute bargain hunters. Please forgive me for being sceptical, but I haven’t seen this and none of my friends have got a
bargain even if they are going away! Only recently a fairly large travel company has gone into receivership with 17,000 holiday makers stranded in Turkey and Greece, so did they reduce their holidays too much, or just not sell enough in the first place? You might think why is this idiot going on about holiday companies etc, but if you are selling to the public everything is the same, are your shoes too cheap so that you don’t make any money, or so expensive that you just don’t get the consumer through the door? At what time in the season do you start to think about cutting the cost of your goods? Too early and you could have sold more at the “better” price, and too late and you risk being left with goods you just can’t sell. Whether it is holidays or footwear it’s all the same. So…..when is the best time to have a sale in a footwear
store? Do you get to the end of June on your calendar, turn the page and read the word Sale instead of July? Do you wait until the multiple you have been competing with on the High Street starts sticking fluorescent posters all over their windows? Unfortunately, it is a safe bet that some of you will be gently nodding… So what is the answer? I think it should be – ‘when you have too much stock’ irrespective of where we are in the lunar line up. Mars may be looking strong in your northern region, but it’s not much good if your accountant turns up to kick you in your nether-regions! (Resisted the urge for a cheap planetary one-liner here – keep it clean provocateur). Most retailers have a particular date in mind and regardless of weather, competition and how much stock they have, stick to these dates religiously, but is this the right thing to do? Should you vary this date? Is there another way? If you have a sale every season does that mean you always have
too much stock, or is it good practise to get rid of all your old season’s stock ready for the “new” season? In an ideal world you would sell 100% at 100% price ticket, but in the real world it is impossible. Yes, it’s always good to have a clear out and to pull in some really much needed cash ready for the new season stock arriving, but when you do it’s always a good idea to ask yourself: “Did I really need to buy that style all those months ago at the beginning of the season or could I have done without it? However many years you have been selling footwear it’s always good to ask questions of yourself or your buyer, if you employ one. How many times have you thought “bet that ends up in the sale” and it has, so why did you buy it in the first place? Of course this is the time when those of us lad’s and lasses on the
road gird our loins and wait for the predictably lame calls from the usual customers who try the same excuses every year - ‘well it
16 • FOOTWEAR TODAY • AUGUST 2010
didn’t fit as well as it should have’, ‘it arrived later than the rest of the stock and therefore it didn’t fit into our product mix’, or worse still, ‘I took the whole line off the shelves as I had a pair returned faulty’. The fact that it has taken the whole season to report this and no other customer has made the same complaint, get’s slightly frustrating to put it politely. For those who watch Mary Portas Queen of Retail, you know you should be thinking outside the box. Maybe a special window or in-store area for this weeks special offer, a mid-season sale (Blue Cross sales work for some), or incentivise the staff – if they know you are wasting money having a style not selling which will affect their bonus, they will fly out the door!
For those who watch Mary Portas Queen of Retail, you know you should be thinking outside the box. Maybe a special window or in-store area for this weeks special offer, a mid-season sale (Blue Cross sales work for some), or incentivise the staff – if they know you are wasting money having a style not selling which will affect their bonus, they will fly out the door!
However, while retailers are thinking about sales and how they
can clear their bills ready for the next season’s delivery etc. all the good agents have been to see their suppliers and manufactures. Whatever you do for your one shop and one target market, those responsible for a whole market have to think for everyone everywhere. It’s a logistical nightmare trying to decide the right colours, the predicted weather, the north/south divide (that does exist regardless of political denial), when the samples will arrive, when the main stock will arrive, and of course, how are the payments progressing with the late payers etc. I hope you are all feeling a lot better now, because at least you
take an instant debit card payment or cash…instant gratification and you only have yourselves to please and justify your decisions to. Make a mistake and it is not the end of the world but the same cannot be said for us. So keep your lines of communication open, keep your sales people informed and ask them to inform you of anything they could have sold, or would have sold if they had got it or we had got it right…then let us know. We are the conduit from sales to production and if we get it right, then who knows….sales may be a thing of the past! Well, we can live in hope!
www.footweartoday.co.uk
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80