Ditch the Guesswork for Smarter Buying
September is always a month of transition for UK pro shops. As evenings start to cool, your focus may be on shifting the last of the summer stock with end of season deals and discounts.
Plans are also being made for the inventory that will adjourn your shelves next season – crucial decisions that will dictate your business’s success over the next 12 months. Retail buying is the most important part of the job to get right. It’s the driving force behind your business and yet many golf retailers still rely on intuition to make those key decisions.
Peter runs an on-course pro shop in the south west of England and, despite being an experienced retailer, still lacks confidence when it comes to buying stock. “I’ll admit I’m not great at budgeting and planning. I can see my turnover and stock turn in Xpos, but I don’t go much deeper than that. This part of the job can be overwhelming.”
THE NUMBERS ARE YOUR FRIEND
In its simplest essence, retail boils down to the concept of finding the products with the highest profit potential and marketing them to the people that walk through your door.
"AIM FOR 50% MARGIN ON GLOVES"
Gone are the days when guesswork dictated how much money you could make and what your customers should buy from you next year.
Let your ePos help. Xpos is a powerful tool with data-rich reports to guide you towards making informed decisions that will boost your profits, and keep your shop customers happy.
SIMPLE STRATEGIES
Last year you bought gloves, shoes and shirts from Brand A. For your next meeting with the brand representative, be prepared with three actionable steps.
- Having a benchmark is essential. Without it you won’t know if a product has been performing well or not – remember that an empty shelf is not a guarantee that a product has made you enough money! There are several ways to benchmark your Brands:
- Compare to previous years
- Compare same group different Brand
- Compare to the market
2.Use the Product Group Statistics report in Xpos and check the following for each Group within Brand A.
- Quantity delivered vs quantity sold
- Margin made vs target margin
You can then compare this against previous years.
"IMPROVING YOUR MARGIN FROM 30% TO 35% ON A £200k TURNOVER WILL GIVE YOU £10k MORE PROFIT"
3. Next, check the Sales Analysis by Supplier report in Xpos and compare different brands across each product Group. How did Brand A’s gloves perform against brands B and C?
“You won’t know how successful your gloves are until you compare turnover and margin across the brands,” says retail expert Mark Hopkins, “For example, when it comes to shoes and shirts, which brand gives you the best profit?”
When you buy several items from one brand – gloves, balls, accessories, shoes, etc - the water can get muddy. It’s often difficult to see the impact that the individual product margins have on your business. A little time spent looking at the right report will pay dividends.
“Gloves are a classic example” continues Mark, “Many golf retailers settle for 35% margin on gloves, but the reality is they could be making over 50% in this Group”.
Use the market numbers to not only compare your performance against pro shops across the UK, but also offer alternative brands. Thanks to the hundreds of golf retailers who have signed up to our reporting tool, Datatrac, you can gain exclusive access to country-wide shop stats, including average product margins across the UK. For up to date market information, come along to one of our Autumn workshops where we’ll be discussing the latest insights.
This October and November, the Xpos experts are running a series of free workshops. To book a seat and find out more information, email hello@xpos.co.uk