How A Powerful Purchasing Plan Determines Your Success
By Don Greig, Founder, Focus Business Management Institute
“Failing to plan is planning to fail”. – Unknown
Having an effective procuring strategy is one of the keystones to retail diamond jewelry store success. Remember that each month ends a previous 12 month trading cycle and begins a brand new one. How well you program your acquiring for the next 12 months will influence your success.
SUPPLIERS We’re all familiar with the Pareto principle: 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. The identical holds true for your vendors. Your top 8-10 vendors must be producing 80% of your sales. As a result, if you would like to increase your annual sales by 30%, you may need to enhance the sales of your top suppliers by the same amount. What supplier wouldn’t want a 30% annual enhancement in sales? Let them understand exactly what your strategies are and what exactly you are going to want from them so as to make it occur (e.g. quicker distribution time, better terms, much more aggressive balancing).
Additionally, it’s best to be replacing those vendors that are not supplying you what you’ll need – even if they’ve been a tried and true provider for many years. We have found that as trade cycles change, so do the corporate models and customer service levels of the wholesale suppliers. You need to make the changes to your home business that will help you succeed now. Go out and find distributors who’ve attractive merchandise in a price point (over $1000 average retail sale) that can allow you to move to to the next stage. You also want to locate several far more diamond vendors who’ve the top quality, cut, and cost you want to pay. You will discover these suppliers at the Luxury Show, the JCK show, the Continental Getting Group, Centurion, plus the IJO show.
SPENDING “You’ve got to spend money to make money.” This is accurate, however it is how you spend your funds that is the important element to success. Retail jewelers have a look at their monthly spending and tend to believe, “Wow. I don’t would like to invest that a lot this month on stock for the reason that I have this and that to pay” and then they don’t stock their store correctly. Bear in mind, a retail jewelry store performing $1 million in annual sales will spend a minimum of $500,000 on product over the next 12 months. In the event you don’t invest dollars on the stock, you won’t have it inside the store, and you couldn’t sell it.
This $500,000 is your open to buy for the year, an average of $40,000 per month. This is quickly extrapolated; a $2 million store will invest $1 million ($80,000 per month); a $3 million store will spend $1.5 million, ($125,000 per month), and so on. This is actually a lot of money and how wisely you spend it’ll completely control your prosperity.
PURCHASING Spending isn’t buying. Spending is having cash leave your bank account. Purchasing will be the method of knowing what you’ll need and then spending the revenue necessary to obtain it. Once you go to the tradeshows these figures should be foremost in your mind. You are not visiting the shows to look; you might be planning to go to the shows to purchase incredibly stunning diamond semi-mounts, diamond pendants, bracelets and earrings one piece at a time. It is best to also know what cost points of what product you have to correctly stock your store and also have the wholesale cost already calculated so that you’ll be able to make sure a target of 130% median markup.
Diamonds and color ought to yield 80% of your sales, with the diamond sections accounting for 62% of revenues along with the color departments comprising the remaining 18%. The rest of your store will account for the remaining 20% of your enterprise, but your focus wants to be on how you obtain the items in this 80% group. It is best to be looking to obtain gorgeous pieces that fall into the $3,750, $6,500, $15,000, and $25,000 retail cost ranges.
When attending the trade shows, be sure to quit by the Chinese as well as the Indian pavilions to see the new exciting trends that are coming into the United States. Visiting these sections also gives you a broader worldwide perspective of what exactly is going on in the jewelry business today.
What’s your forecasted open to purchase? The table listed below shows how much it’s best to be seeking to wisely spend at the trade shows, along with the quantity of old stock that you really should attempt to stock balance (or exchange) along with your distributors.
A solid buying strategy is critical to the success of your retail jewelry store. Remember: What you do buy at these shows is dictating what you may sell, and how nicely you’ll profit, inside the next calendar year.
Focus BMI will likely be attending the following trade shows in 2011, and attends most of the main trade shows in the USA on a yearly basis. Please be sure to come visit us at the July 2011 IJO show in Nashville.
We welcome you to visit our booth for a custom acquiring analysis program.
Focus Business Management Institute is considered the industry expert when it comes to retail jewellery business advisory solutions. By means of a custom-made statistics package that has been improved upon during the last 30 years, the people at Focus BMI can give just about anyone with an exact analysis of the inventory you actually require inside the company as well as what price points, to be able to increase your success.