industrytechnology A Tale of Two Retailers


Michael Bloom looks at the diff erence technology can make to how you run your day-to-day business. The emphasis is on the practical; as well as the time and eff ort saved with the right approach. This month sees him look at website creation.


MR LEAP


Mr Leap is aware that business on the internet is growing at over 30% a year. As he has the stock available in his shop, it makes sense to create a website and increase his profi tability.


◆ Mr Leap launched himself into his web project and started his website immediately. Although all went well at fi rst, he soon found his web clients were buying items from his website that he did not actually have in stock.


◆ Manually updating his website took hours and his urgent, frequent, stock checks were just not frequent enough. He was alienating many clients plus he had to refund money. Mr Leap realised that his workload had increased far more than his profi t. Aſt er three months, he suspended manual input to his website.


◆ Mr Leap comes to realize that he needs a stock management system, so he fi nds a system into which he can enter all his stock. He immediately embarked upon a frantic round of stock data entry– it takes hours and hours. Eventually every size and colour, for every style, is entered and barcode labelled. All his stock data is exported to the internet.


◆ It becomes obvious he has a problem – his system has information on every size and colour, but as separate items. If he wants to assess a style overall, his system presents him with a list of forty diff erent products. To get a total stock and value count for a style he has to visit all separate products and add them together. A hundred styles could easily have a


combination of over 4000 record cards. When he wants to assess sales it takes still more hours. He begins to understand what it is that makes a system specialist for the sports trade.


◆ Mr Leap fi nds his life revolving around one or two limited fi xed format grid reports, when what he needs is on-screen stock, sales and order grids per style. It’s all been loads of work and he doesn’t dare think about starting all over again when the new season’s stock arrives.


MR LOOK


Mr Look is aware that business on the internet is growing at over 30% a year. As he has the stock available in his shop, it makes sense to create a website and increase his profi tability.


◆ Mr Look realised that it’s far harder to keep a website running than to initially build it. He reviewed a number of systems and opted to install a specialist sports stock management system - where each style contains within itself all of its sizes and colour combinations.


year. As he has the stock available in his shop, it makes sense to create a


Mr Look is aware that business on the internet is growing at over 30% a


website and increase his profi tability.


◆ In doing this he avoided a situation where every size and colour combination is a separate product (i.e. if a product has 10 sizes and four colours then this might only be available as 40 separate stock records). With matrixes available instantly throughout his system, he can quickly and easily enter and review size/colour within a style or across styles.


◆ For Mr Look, placing orders into his system takes just up to 60 seconds per style, including all sizes and colours. When stock for a style on order arrives, in part or in full, he simply goes to the style and is presented with a grid of all the size/colour combinations – it takes him just seconds to enter the new sizes and colours that have arrived.


◆ Critically, this ability to undertake everything in one action via a matrix, compared to Mr Leap’s forty separate actions, is available throughout Mr Look’s system. It’s all undertaken in just one action; not forty separate actions. At the touch of a button he can review orders, stock and sales positions instantly on screen. He can now really manage the business, see what is


and what is not selling - and he uses this information to make more profi t, his forward orders are better, his shop and his web customers more likely to be satisfi ed .


◆ Reviewing his experience Mr Look can see that much drudgery has been reduced or eliminated. As the new season approaches he anticipates another increase in his web turnover and profi t.


Michael can be contacted at Top to Toe on 0845 130 3535 or via e mail at info@toptotoe.com and mark your e mail “SGB Question” 10 | SGB-SPORTS.COM


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