Inside Business Retailer Roundtable | ShelfHelp in Ayrshire
home, then you’re not going to sell them much else because they can’t even carry it. MR – Lower margin products we have to pull back on now. It’s not worth our while. We need to make our money somewhere. Confectionery is a money maker, so is crisps; grocery margins are reduced. Household the margins are reduced because of the move to price-marked, while pet food has also seen margins cut. We have to give prominence to products with a higher profit margin, we try to guide the customers towards those products. CS – So much goes through promotions and PMPs now. I’d say as much as 70% of our sales. CM – If you take away newstrade and cigarettes, I’d agree with that. (In fact, this figure is roundly agreed on around the table).
IS ANYONE DOING ADDED VALUE, RATHER THAN STRIPPING IT OUT? Paul Lettice (PL) – I was in the States last week and one of the most evident things is that when you walk into a store it’s not promotions that hit you, it’s food-to-go and hot drinks. There has to be something that can be done in this country to harness that. GS – We have fresh bakery delivered daily. CS – It’s all individually wrapped, and that has appeal. MR – We do that too. If it’s locally produced you don’t need to advertise. The name is there. CS – Trading standards used to demand that all ingredients had to be included on a wrapped product, but they’ve eased off on that and it’s made a huge difference. Price- wise too, if you put a menu up you can list all cakes etc, rather than individually pricing every item. They’re changed their way and it’s good for independent retailers. GS – Spar have just done a deal with local butchers for fresh butcher meat to be delivered every day on sale or return. It’s low margin, but customers like it and there’s no waste.
WHERE ARE YOU MAKING MARGINS? GS – Crisps, confectionery; you can make decent margins on alcohol if you do it right. IM – Because we’re establishing a new store, we’re running promotions on bread and milk and bread has doubled, while milk is
48 SLR | MAY 2012
We get meat from local butchers, and then there are rolls and so on. Customers want to see that. When Scotmid took over BCS they stopped using the local roll supplier, and I took them on. I know Scotmid are a big company, but they can be a bit naïve. You don’t stop stocking something that sells well.
DEAL INTO CORE RANGE GS – If we think it’s going to sell we’ll put it into core range, otherwise we’ll try to sell off and be done. Take Pampers wipes: when Spar put them on BOGOF I’ll stock up and keep them at £1.49 – they wouldn’t sell at over £2. CS – Babywipes is a market that’s really taking off. We see a lot off different people buying them, from pensioners to truck drivers. We must have six different kinds now. HR – If a product is not working for us we’ll delist it, we’ll try others in its place and examine our sales. We review each category once a month. By the time we’ve finished we go back to the start.
creeping up. We’re letting people know the store is there. It’s different when you’re established in an area. GS – We have the same customer base every day, we don’t get much traffic, so if we put bread on promotion they won’t be back the next day. CS – A lot of multibuy promotions I don’t like – salads for example. I don’t want two salads, so I’d walk out a shop. I’d much rather it was half price, so there are deals we won’t take. MR – We do bread for £1, after getting it in for 79p. Milk, bread, potatoes we try to keep at a reasonably low price. We’ve done that for a few years and our sales keep growing. CS – People look at things entirely differently now. We have local farmer’s eggs and value eggs and we sell more than three times more of the farmer’s eggs. People at one stage would have gone for the value, but not so much now. For people that want it, it’s there. GS – You need both. You have to try and cater for everyone in a rural shop. Some people can afford £1 but not £1.79. MR – We use local products where we can.
WHO USES EPOS DATA TO ANALYSE SALES? HR – Most stores have EPoS in because they want to scan stock. They don’t use it to look at margins or how it’s selling. PL – They spend thousands on this and don’t make the most of it. GS – It’s down to time for me. I download prices once a week and look at prices/margins and make decisions. I don’t use it to its capacity. I wouldn’t dream of using it for stock control. I’m in the shop every day and I don’t feel; I don’t need to do stock control with EPoS because I’m there. MR – We check every section with our EPoS, look at where we’re winning and losing and blue-tag some lines. Something that doesn’t sell can be holding back something that will, so I reduce prices rather than just having it sit there until it sells out. CM – EPoS is a time thing. My wife can spend most of her day at the computer changing prices and so forth. With 4,000 lines it takes a lot of maintenance to get it right. We could do more with it but I’m happy enough with the margins we make. Antony Begley (AB) – Is there not huge scope to automate processes with EPoS? Are there enough people willing to offer training HR – If the customer [the retailer], doesn’t
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