RETAIL TECHNOLOGY Ten tips
to buying a shoe or apparel retail system
By Eugenio Leijten, Executive Director, Retail Technology Ltd.
1. Start with the end in mind. Ultimately, any retail management system should be able to produce clear and accurate reports as after all, this is the reward for all the hard work in logging your sales and stock movement transactions. Therefore, when looking at any system, make sure you insist on a comprehensive demo of a system’s reporting capability.
2. Apparel is rather different. A camera shop’s sales report is pretty simple compared to a sales report for shoes and apparel. These items come in different colours, sizes, fabrics, width fittings, cup sizes etc etc. This requires further sophistication in the way the reports are set up or generally in the way you look at a style’s performance on screen. Most systems are simply incapable or totally inept at, for example; producing a sales report by style/colour/size.
3. A system must pay for itself. Deployment of a system is only then justified if it helps you to achieve either a bigger stock turn, increased sales and/or margins or less markdown or of course all of these. If you have a turnover of £750,000 and your aim is to achieve a two percent increase on your achieved margin of 50% then a system should not cost you more than £15,000 a year.
4. How financially strong is your system supplier? Investing in a system from a company that is insolvent is risky! This seems obvious but a quick analyses on
www.companycheck.co.uk will give you an instant insight, free of charge, on what your system supplier’s financial state is. You would be amazed at how many system suppliers are simply insolvent or very close to it. If they go under, chances are that your new investment will too!
5. How about support for your chosen system? When buying a system you enter into a relationship with your supplier for quite a few years. A happy relationship is directly related to how good your supplier’s support provisions are. To start with the basics; is there a manual for the system? If it’s not there now, it’s unlikely it will be there when you take delivery of the system. Can you phone for support and immediately talk to a support technician? Can you get instant answers? If support costs are low, chances are that the support desk’s response to your queries will take a while if you get an answer at all. You get what you pay for!
6. e-Commerce capability To have a web presence is now nearly unavoidable for the vast majority of retailers. Therefore you need to be able to integrate a web store with your general retail system rather than having to maintain two separate sets of data. Besides that, you want to be able to deploy techniques of your choice without being locked into a system that doesn’t meet with the experience you want your customers to be able to enjoy. Very important also is that what you sell on line is what you can deliver. Therefore your stock position must be able to be updated instantly or at least regularly throughout the day.
7. Customer loyalty program Just like the need to be able to sell on the web, the ability to run a customer loyalty program is becoming increasingly important. To gain a new customer is harder work (and costs more) than retaining existing ones. Loyalty programs can make a huge difference in retaining a customer but also for them to spend more money with you.
8. Interface with suppliers Does your major supplier offer an automated stock fill-up system? If they do, chances are that you could gain excellent benefits from linking your system to theirs. Is your chosen system capable of doing that? Ask whether existing users are already doing this.
9. Save on tedious data entry Data entry can be long winded and tedious. Is the system of your choice capable of simply importing a catalogue file? If it is then it saves you hours of tedious data input, increases accuracy and there’s no need to print your own barcode labels.
10. Talk to users Last but not least: The proof of the system is in improved retail performance! How are other users faring? Do they like the system in every-day use? Are they able to make use of reports? Are they getting good support? Is the supplier delivering what it promises? Most important of all; is their system making them more efficient!
Contact: Eugenio Leijten Tel: +44 845 450 4905 Fax: +44 845 450 4915 DDI: +44 1458 271 871 M: +44 7540 722 337 Skype: eugenio_leijten
Email:
eugenio@rtl-mail.com Web:
www.rtl-world.com
48 • FOOTWEAR TODAY
• SEPTEMBER 2012
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