Retail

Stock, shelf space, shrinkage and the four weeks that decide your year. Running a shop, online and off, at one site and at seventy.

Shrinkage, and where stock actually goes. You counted 412 bottles and the system said 447. Before you blame anyone, work out which of the four causes of shrinkage you are actually looking at.
Shelf space is your most expensive asset. The end cap by the door sells four times what the same product sells halfway down aisle three. You have always known it. Here is how to price it.
The wholesale price falls as you grow, and so does your excuse. The rep offers 8% off for a pallet instead of a layer. The pallet is 96 cases and you sell nine a week. That discount has an interest rate attached.
Stock turn, and the money asleep on your shelves. Every retailer has a shelf in the back that everyone steps around. Working out what it costs you, and marking down before you have to, is most of inventory management.
Online is not cheaper, it is differently expensive. You opened the online shop because there is no rent. Then you hired someone to pack. Here is the cost that replaced the one you removed.
Returns are a category of their own. Fourteen parcels came back on Tuesday and nobody's job is to open them. Returns are a category with its own costs, its own rate and its own law.
Being found, when you are not the cheapest. Someone two streets away searched for the exact thing in your window and ended up on a marketplace. Getting found without being cheapest is a solvable problem.
When the platform is your landlord. Your best month came from one marketplace. So did the worst week, three months later, after a ranking change you never saw and cannot appeal.
Pick, pack and the walking you are paying for. A picker can walk eleven miles in a shift and you pay for every one of them. Most of the cost of picking is the distance between the items, not the picking.
The four weeks that decide your year. You place the order that decides December in August, before you know anything. The cash gap arrives in October and nobody warned you about it the first time.
Keeping ten shops the same. Store seven does the coffee wrong and has done for two years. It is also the third best branch in the estate. Consistency is worth having and worth questioning.
Your till knows things you do not. Your till has recorded every transaction for four years. You have looked at the weekly total. There are three reports in there that would change what you do.
Everything between the lease and the first sale. Between signing the lease and taking the first £10 there are about thirty separate obligations, and roughly four of them have lead times you cannot compress.
What it costs you to be paid by card. The rate you were quoted covers about a third of what you pay. The rest is on the statement, and the terminal contract runs longer than most shop leases.
Loyalty schemes, and the discount you were giving anyway. Most loyalty schemes pay people to keep doing what they were already doing. The useful ones change a behaviour you can name before you launch.
Gift cards are somebody else's money. A gift card is a loan from a customer who may never collect. It is a liability on your balance sheet, and the VAT point depends on what the card can buy.
Buy now pay later, from the shop's side. The provider takes several times what a card costs you. Whether that is worth paying depends on whether the customer would have bought anyway.
Counting the stock properly. A count that agrees with the system tells you nothing if the system was adjusted to match. The value is in the variances you investigate.

Retail

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