Running a business in Britain, page 7
246 articles on what it actually takes to run a business in Britain: VAT, staff, rent, rates, tenants, stock and sites. From the studio that simulates it.
- Housekeeping is what limits how many rooms you can sell. You can sell any room you like. You can only sell the rooms that will be ready, and that number is set on a whiteboard in a basement corridor.
- Four guests, four different businesses. The corporate guest, the couple, the coach party and the wedding block are not four versions of the same customer. They are four businesses.
- Weddings and conferences, and the deposit that carries you. A deposit taken eighteen months out is the cheapest money in hospitality. The Saturday it books is the most expensive thing you own.
- Staffing a hotel that never closes. A hotel is open for every hour of every day. Somebody has to be awake for all of them, and the rota that achieves it is usually the one breaking the rules.
- The refurbishment cycle, and what happens if you skip one. Nobody notices a tired hotel in year six. The market notices in year nine, and it prices you accordingly before anybody writes it in a review.
- Service recovery, and the complaint that is worth money. The guest who tells you at the desk is doing you a favour. The one who says nothing and writes it up on Monday is the expensive one.
- 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.