MISFIT
A shed full of wellies
she is going to get home. She is dressed completely unsuitably for what is going on outside in the real, cruel world. Her stiletto heels will give her a modicum of grip, but her feet will soon be
A
soaking. She is wearing a knee-length skirt. Someone once told me that nylon stockings keep ladies’ legs warm, but, being a male, I am sceptical. Her anorak was designed for looks. It might keep a light shower off, but there is every chance she will freeze to death in the hundred yards between our shop and the car park. In theory her woes are nothing to do with us. Her payment is already snugly in the hands of Visa, and our service does not extend to getting her home. We are not the sort of high-class establishment that can afford to collect its clientele from their homes and take them back again. Our insurance does not cover leaving a customer on the premises overnight and there is less than an hour to closing time. There is also the consideration that a dead customer is no customer, so it is in our interest to get her to her car so she can live to buy again. On the other hand here she is, and an obvious target
for a wellie salesman. I do my stuff, out comes the Visa card again and in return for the extra sale I gallantly offer to escort her to her car. I don my waterproof hiking boots, hoist on my skiing anorak, grab my umbrella and off we go. She clings to my arm which pleases me as I do not want her disappearing in the blizzard. We get to her car and magically she has the key to hand. She gets in, thanks me profusely and I stagger back to the comfort of my shop, wondering if I have done enough to keep her custom. Her car was the smallest runabout that money can
s I write this a deathly hush has fallen on the darkening world. Large flakes of snow are coming out of the sky and what little passing traffic there is is passing in silence. Our only customer is clutching her purchase and worrying about how
wellies in? Would it not be cruel? I tell myself it may well be even harder to get them to do it in the morning and resort to the only argument I can think of – bribery. A mere quarter of an hour later the wellies are safely in the stockroom
and my people are going home, leaving me with my second quandary: How much to charge? This is the retailer’s perennial problem. Most people solve it by adding a
fixed percentage, usually 33% on returns or 50% on cost on the basis that it will even out in the long term, or possibly because it saves them thinking. I have always disagreed with this. The price of anything is what a customer will pay, so I reckon that someone needing to keep their feet dry in the snow deserves to contribute more than the usual profit to my retirement fund. There are other considerations: think about: the interest I have had to pay by storing the dead stock for months; the risk I took – we could have had several dry winters, not forgetting the notional rent on the shed. But it all comes back to what the customer will pay. Not as simple as it
looks. If I am the only shop for miles around which is offering wellies, then I can charge what I like, but how do I know, without trudging round all the others in a blizzard, whether I am?
buy. If she fails to make it home, will I be to blame? I picture the furious husband accusing me of sending his wife to a freezy death. I’m pretty sure we are safe from the ambulance chasing lawyers, but what about the publicity? I picture the headline – KILLED BY A PAIR OF SHOES, followed by text about flint-hearted shopkeeper who sent the poor soul to her untimely end. All I can do is put her out of my mind, which I do, and concentrate on the
If I price my wellies at £100 a pair then the customers will decide they are better off with cold wet feet. On the other hand if I put on the standard mark-up then surely I am passing up a golden opportunity. Think of all those shoes that went in the sale at cost or even less – this is my chance to get some of that loss back, isn’t it?
If I price my wellies at £100 a pair then the customers will decide they are
wellie problem. For once I have played my cards right and have bought a large quantity of wellies at a good price in the summer from someone who needed cash badly. They could have sat, a wasting asset, on our balance sheet for years but now is our moment to make some money. I took the precaution of testing them, since I once nearly bought a parcel
of wellies going cheap which turned out to let water, but this lot have passed the stand in the bath test. There are two problems. The first is they are in the shed in what we laughingly call our garden, a scruffy patch of bare ground behind the shop. I look at the staff who are already mentally putting on their coats. Can I persuade them to go out in the snow and get the
12 • FOOTWEAR TODAY • FEBRUARY 2011
better off with cold wet feet. On the other hand if I put on the standard mark-up then surely I am passing up a golden opportunity. Think of all those shoes that went in the sale at cost or even less – this is my chance to get some of that loss back, isn’t it? Maybe I should compromise and simply double the cost price plus VAT of course. I try that out, and it looks too much. I don’t want to damage my goodwill by getting a reputation as a profiteer, do I? What did I do in the end? I slept on it and set the price at what looked like
an attractive price point which gave me a more than decent return, and at the end of the day every last wellie had gone, like icicles in a heat wave.
www.footweartoday.co.uk
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