The Currys white goods customer proposition in 1999

Back then we didn’t have a transactional website – in fact a basic Packard Bell desktop PC with a colour monitor, hopeless processor and dial-up modem would set you back a good £1000. People simply didn’t have internet access or computers in their homes.

However, we had an amazing proposition. With an extended range of over 2000 products either on display or visible via in-store catalogues Currys were able to provide a good 150-200 top selling products to take-away right now (and bearing in mind these are high-cube items – bulky – fridges, freezers, washers, dryers, cookers etc) and the rest of the entire 2000 products were available for next day home delivery (within a 4-hour window) if purchased by about 4pm today.

Wow. Just think about that. This was  a market leading proposition. Stores were able to provide the very few customers who came with a van / big estate car with an item to take with them, but more importantly, was able to fulfil a pretty impressive delivery proposition which now is only just being achieved by many so-called “multi-channel” retailers.

How did Currys achieve what was then such a powerful service proposition?

It was all down to the supply chain network infrastructure. Called the LDC network (local distribution centre) Currys ran an amazing 19 smaller warehouses around the UK which were supplemented by 1 (and later a 2nd) national “hub”. I was also responsible for the team which booked a phenomenal 900 truck loads of stock into these 21 locations per week. The LDCs were stock holding locations for the fastest selling products – depending on the storage space and volume they’d carry lineage of between 150 and 250 items. The hub(s) carried back up stock of all of the fast sellers and a full coverage of the long tail of items, the near 2000 lines which made Currys the out and out market leader in choice of product from the consumer perspective.

Every day customers home delivery orders were placed in store and those orders were communicated to the LDC that serviced their post code. Similarly any sales from the store of the carry out stock also was reported to the LDC. This triggered the whole delivery and replenishment cycle and the delivery van’s load and routing for the following morning!

Store sales were replenished next day; customer orders were delivered (if required) next day…. yes, that’s fine if your LDC is in stock of an item – but what happened if it was out of stock or the customer order was not for one of the lines that it carried?

Simple – that was where the hub kicked in. All demand that was unfulfilled by LDC stock triggered a pick from the hub to the LDC. This was cross docked during the night, and to make best used of transport, the empty returning trailer would either bring back damaged stock, obsolete items or collect from supplier.

So, the customer, oblivious to this amazing system, could order any of over 2000 different products from the white goods range and receive it via home delivery the very next day.

Awesome!

So, what went wrong – how come almost 13 years later Currys have gone backwards?

I left Dixons to go to Argos in early 2001 but prior to that talks were already taking place about reducing cost and complexity in the supply chain infrastructure. LCP and Accenture were called in to do complex modelling around the various routes to market and the cost to service those routes. White goods, whilst effective and a market leading proposition, had a very hefty service overhead and relatively low profit margins. Other areas of the supply chain – small domestic appliances shipped from a main national distribution centre and fast-turn items such as cameras were shipped from a “rapid response” distribution centre. When you looked at the entire network and not only at white goods it was apparent that the infrastructure was a bit of a muddle and needed a complete overhaul.

Sadly though in overhauling the network Currys moved away from offering next day delivery. About the same time the transactional websites started to go live and with the growth of online all the attention was centred on how to service internet sales.

I don’t know how many customers moved away from Currys when the proposition was changed, but I do know that fierce online competition and no compelling reason to buy (next day delivery for instance) made Currys a me-too brand along side a new, more diverse competitive set that wasn’t just Comet but now included Amazon, Co-op, Tesco, ASDA etc.

So what’s the moral of the story?

For me the moral of the story, reflecting on the really tough times Dixons have traded through lately, reflecting on what’s happened with Comet and Best Buy, is that when it comes to the crunch the majority of electricals consumers aren’t retailer-loyal. They want a branded item, with features and functions. That’s identifiable. Once the consumer has identified an item the internet (Google) has made it simple to check who sells it, for what price, with what delivery proposition and any other value-added extras.  When you don’t offer anything special then the only thing you can do is compete on price… and that’s a downward spiral where the retailer with the deepest pockets to “buy their customers” is going to be the winner.

It seems that Best Buy and Comet were not that retailer, and, with Dixons reinventing themselves with Dixons Black stores and merging PC World and Currys, the others lost out to the better retailer.

I still hold a special place in my heart for Dixons – I enjoyed working for them all those years ago and learnt so much. I hope this news is just what they needed!

Rather than provide a full write up these 2 video reviews should give you a good flavour of the day:

The Retail Conference 2011 – Delegate Video Review

The Retail Conference 2011 – Sponsor Video Review

The Retail Conference 2012

If you want to find out more about The Retail Conference 2012, which takes place on 19th September, once again at America Square Conference Centre please visit www.retailconference.co.uk for full details including an outline agenda structure for the day and registrations.

If you are interested in become a sponsor please email us – register@retailconference.co.uk

We look forward to meeting you there!

I thought it appropriate to write this particular blog in the face of the news over the recent weeks that a number of retailers are cutting back significantly, closing stores. Again, today Lloyds announced further job cuts. A friend of mine constantly goes through one round of redundancy consultation to another, to another. So the question is, how do you manage the employees who are left behind?

The effect of redundancies on the people who are left behind…

When facing a down-sizing exercise, all the attention and focus is on those people who are potentially going to lose their jobs. How much do they get? what consultation do we do? What support can we give them? and so on.

The effect however on the remaining employees is equally is difficult. The level of uncertainty that they find themselves operating in causes stress, affects quality of work, affects home life and all aspects of their day to day working and this is when you start getting your employees saying things like they are stressed or anxious.

Now I’m all for honesty with employees, but I don’t mean share your cash-flow or your P&L unless of course you choose to, but if you have completed one round of downsizing and you know that that is it, then let your employees know this.

Don’t be scared to keep your employees informed – it helps reduce their stress levels!

If however, the business needs to undergo a further review in 6 – 9 months, let them know. What happens is that managers and businesses are scared of sharing this information with their employees, because they don’t want the few employees left behind to leave as this will have negative impact on the business. Well this is a sort of selfish approach to how you handle those left behind. It is your duty as an employer to ensure the welfare of your employees and if that means that you have a bit of pain if someone leaves before you get the chance to place them in a redundancy situation in 6 – 9 months then that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Can those left behind cope with picking up all the work?

You cannot expect to allow a percentage of your employees to leave one week through redundancy and come in on the Monday and expect everything to be as normal. Put in place some group sessions, group forums, discuss ways you could have improved the recent process, find out how much information the remaining employees want, and find out how happy they are to be picking up the slack that someone who has just left used to do. Manage the situation accordingly.

Doing nothing and expecting something is dangerous…

Doing nothing and expecting something is dangerous. It goes with the perception that you don’t care, that you’re not interested. Be clear about the process. Look at workloads, working arrangements, group working, team activities and get your employees involved in recommending how the work is carried out and distributed. Give them the option of lunchtime forums to discuss their concerns, especially if they are taking on extra tasks. Give them the support and the training to deliver effective results for you and be honest with them. If times are going to be tough for the next 6 – 9 months, then left them know that and if someone goes and gets another job because they don’t want to risk another redundancy situation, then so be it. You will manage.

Employees are not like mushrooms… don’t keep them in the dark, don’t cover them in ****!

Quite often, it is assumed that employees are best kept in the dark, that we don’t want to worry them with the detail and the uncertainty. However, if you have these tough discussions early on, then the shock is less, you get more co-operation to steer through any changes, you get buy in from the team and you get an inclusive workforce, rather than one that moans at the coffee machine about you.

The employees who remain behind are the ones who are most likely to steer your company back to a positive position so make sure you use them and use them wisely.

No one can predict the future in business but everyone agrees that times are incredibly tough, but by facing up to this realisation with your employees, you will be in a position to manage any change that needs to come your way.

Do not ignore the ones left behind as they are your future success.

What are the drawbacks of presenting a wide range of products?

Whilst you may believe that a wide range provides your customer with choice it can often be overwhelming to the consumer. When faced with an array of products, all of which could actually meet their basic need, the consumer at best will select the cheapest (if in doubt, save money) or simply walk away as it takes them too long to figure out the differences and benefits of each option.

Even if your customer presses on and makes a choice, the next problem is that rather than channelling all the demand through a few options the demand is split between many options. This means that you have more product facings to consider, more shelf-fill actions to undertake, more items to include in a stock count, more items to set up on the merchandise management system, more pick faces in the warehouse…. etc. The more SKUs you include on the range the more cash margin contribution each SKU needs to be making to earn it’s place – quite simply the cost of set up, stocking, reporting, operationally managing, presenting, selling and clearing has to be accounted for before the SKU even begins to earn any money for your retail business.

How does range rationalisation increase profit and reduce cost?

When a retailer undertakes a range rationalisation exercise the entire range is analysed, by SKU, for cash margin delivered and number of units sold. The tail of SKUs are initially ear marked for removal. Then the clever stuff starts… We ask ourselves:

1. If we cull this SKU from the range would the unit sales be transferable to any of the remaining (higher margin SKUs). In the most part the answer is yes as typically when a retailer has an oversized range there are plenty of options remaining to channel demand through!
2. If the unit sales are not transferable what is the margin loss based on the lost sales? How many customers are we likely to disappoint by not including the SKU?
3. If we cull all of the proposed SKUs what does the resulting range construction look like? Do all sub-ranges have sufficient authority? Will a credible offer be presented to the consumer? (will they even notice what has been taken away?!)

Based on the answers to the above questions we can make a fact-based decision to move forward with a range reduction exercise.

Typically by channelling more volume through fewer higher margin SKUs this has an immediate and positive impact on profitability. In addition all of the costs of ownership of the SKUs have been removed from the business – so both operationally, administratively and on-systems there is less “clutter” to deal with – thus reducing costs.

It is often a massively compelling business case, and in fact very simple to implement once the analysis has been done. Retail Acumen have worked with a variety of retailers on projects to intensify assortment performance and to undertake range rationalisation. If this is something that you think could benefit your retail business, let me know!

Consumers trust the information on websites, especially that published by big brands

Rather unexpectedly the Specsavers website told us that the store opened at 8:30am (and at present, on Monday 20th june, it still does). Brilliant. We could dash into town before the crowds, hopefully get the lenses put into a new frame, and be away again to get on with the plans we had for the day!

Because we trusted a large company like Specsavers (with over 1400 stores) to present accurate information to consumers via their website we didn’t for a moment imagine that it would be wrong…

Customer Satisfaction is about meeting expectations. Specsavers failed before we’d even got into the store…

When we arrived at the store, at 8:35am, having really rushed to get out the house, we were met by the following A4 printout selotaped to the door…

Oh dear. Not only were we now faced with a 25 minute wait but it also looked like a few of the staff had forgotten… standing outside waiting for a keyholder!

When someone did arrive I mentioned that we were waiting due to the advertised opening time on the Specsavers website. With no regard for our feelings, our expectations or the fact that THEY DON’T ONLY COMMUNICATE WITH CUSTOMERS AT THE THRESHOLD the staff simply said “you should come back later” and “yes, they’ve not updated the website yet”.

Now those who know me know I’m pretty internet savvy – but I’m not a minority. Over 60% of in store shoppers research online before making a visit to a store. It may seem an irrelevant irritation to the store staff but to me telling me to expect to be served from 8:30am and then taking that away from me after the effort I’d made to be there really (really) hacked me off!!! How many people have I told? Loads…

Retailers need to understand their customers are getting more and more pre-sales information from the internet!

Later, when I got home, I did another check about what local information existed about Specsavers online. What were they giving me, as a consumer, that helped me to come to their store with confidence? What were they doing to ensure they didn’t fail to deliver on customer expectations set from promises they made in their own published content?

Frankly, and it didn’t come as a shock, very little local, relevant information was presented to me, a multi-channel shopper, who does lots of pre-sales research online and then will regularly visit the store to complete my transaction.

They have an amazing opportunity for instance with their “Google Places” page – it was “owner verified” (that in itself is something many retailers fail to do!) but then it was unhelpful… as a consumer I saw the data was simply being syndicated in from “Localdatasearch” – thus wasn’t content provided to me by Specsavers and so I immediately doubted the accuracy. In addition they’d not bothered to complete the listing with all the relevant local info such as opening hours etc – you can see the actual listing via Specsavers St Albans Google Places Listing and a screen shot is below:

Local information, local marketing and putting yourself in your customers shoes is key to increasing loyalty and securing incremental sales!

Big retailers seem to forget that each of their stores serves a local community who don’t necessarily have their brand at front of mind as the answer to their needs… Consumers just think “where can I get [requirement] in [location] and will search online accordingly. I find it interesting to see how those smaller, local, independents can actually steal the march on the big-brand competitors by simply focusing on what they have – their store, in their location, with their offer.

I co-own e-mphasis Internet Marketing who are experts in local internet marketing. Whilst I don’t get involved with this business day to day, I have seen many of their case studies and have realised just how important it is to focus on each location specifically in terms of online marketing. This can make a massive different to sales as consumers who otherwise have no destination store in mind are prompted to buy from the ones they find, more so if they find a well known (well trusted) brand! Definitely an unexplored and unexploited area of multi-channel search marketing for most big retailers!

One to think about perhaps… But anyway, back to my story about Specsavers…

To avoid frustrating your customers make sure the information you publish about your business on your website is 100% accurate…

In the end we did get allowed into the store at 9am on the dot. Although we had no appointment the staff were helpful, and, by 9:10am we walked away with a brand new pair of frames and all it took was a couple of signatures as our son, being 5, gets his frames on the NHS!

So we should have gone to specsavers… but they shouldn’t have made it quite so painful. What in the end turned out to be a good customer experience so very nearly wasn’t and could so very easily have been avoided.

The moral of the story? Us consumers trust the information that brands put out online – so please make sure it is accurate or you’re going to get some pretty frustrated consumers.

Trade off: Mark down to clear OR rebalance stock, avoiding maldistribution, increase full price sell through and reduce lost sales?

I think it is pretty reasonable to assume that no matter what effort you put into your forecasting and replenishment your customers won’t buy to plan!! This means than towards the end of a season / before a range refresh not all SKUs will have an ideal distribution of stock across all stores ranged. If you’ve already allocated out remaining stock from DC then there are only 2 things you can do, both dependent on first undertaking analysis of the SKU-store stock levels vs. SKU-store forecast sale rates to understand the likely cost implications of either action:

1. Mark the item down across the chain to encourage sell through of pockets of stock BUT acknowledging you will be losing margin due to mark down spend and impacting availability in some stores where there are no overstocks.
2. Rebalance stock (taking from overstocked stores and replenishing those who would sell out), mindful of the operational overhead of physically moving the stock to locations where it will sell at full price.

Don’t under estimate the value of knowing more about your business… detailed data insights deliver increased profitability

The above actions both depend on someone undertaking analysis of the SKU-store stock levels vs. SKU-store forecast sale rates in order to give you appropriate information upon which to base the decision as to which action is most profitable.

To be honest this is usually an onerous exercise that no one really has time for. Of course then without this information retailers will implement action 1 (the only action you could do without the SKU-store detail) – potentially losing a massive amount of margin unnecessarily.

Supply chain optimisation data analytics, insights and actions that increase availability and improve margin!

If you don’t have the time but want some help with getting into the data and the detail, (and here comes the shameless plug… ) my team at Retail Acumen can support you.

Lately we’ve been building client specific data models, reports and analytics to enable clients to not only have 1-off insights for a specific supply chain project but also to allow them to call on us whenever they need to repeat a process e.g. end of season stock rebalancing.

In our experience using a backhaul approach to uplifting of surplus stock from a handful of stores, returning that to DC and redistributing it out again on the next replenishment run adds only a very marginal increase in logistics and supply chain costs compared to a considerable reduction in mark down spend.

If you’d like to find out more, give me a call, I’m proud that the team have been recently called “data junkies” and I know that they’ll really enjoy delving into the detail to find some great benefits for you too!

Retail Acumen – Detailed analysis and insights into retail business performance…

Our core area of expertise is digging through retail data to unearth the insights that often get missed (because the day job gets in the way!) These insights are a bit like “lightbulb moments” – illuminating – and helping clients to see quick wins and opportunities that may not have been apparent before.

Unusually this week we’ve helped a supplier to retail! e-mphasis Internet Marketing are out sister company. They have been running a multi-channel search marketing trial for a sizeable retail client. The client was struggling to see the ROI and thus the likelihood of rolling out was not looking promising… Yet the performance data e-mphasis had (impressions from search, clicks) indicated this client should have seen SOME benefit – it just didn’t make sense.

Asking the right questions of the data means you get the answers you are looking for…

When e-mphasis told us about this dilemma our first instinct was to push back – their client does not have a transactional website yet, so the multi-channel was really about driving footfall or phone enquiries. Obviously converting these enquiries would depend on quality store staff and availability of what the customers wanted to buy – was that the problem? On further digging it really could not be as 50 outlets had been chosen at random from a chain of over 500 for the trial – it was impossible that ALL would have failed to deliver on service or on availability.

So, the question was, why can’t the client see any uplift for these stores?

The answer was in the data they had used for their analytics. They question they had asked of the data was “How did the trial stores perform LFL (like for like) compared to the whole chain LFL” – the data produced had been 50 trial stores vs. 500 all stores – the trial store data appeared in both series and thus any improvement was “lost” in the numbers.

The question that we posed was “How did the trial stores perform LFL vs. the non-trial stores” – the data produced this time was 50 trial stores vs. 450 non-trial stores. Suddenly results appeared that made a great deal more sense!

Would your boss be pleased with a 2.5% LFL increase?

Using Retail Acumen’s knowledge and understanding of retail data, e-mphasis were able to ask the client to run a more accurate report.

Wow! It was very exciting – throughout the 3 month trial the client could now see a very clear average +2.5% LFL improvement between the LFL of the 450 non-trial stores and the 50 trial stores. By extrapolating this further, should the client progress to a full roll out they would see a massive 30 times ROI, and this would be achieved in the same year!

Today we’re patting ourselves on the back here at Retail Acumen – the e-mphasis client has already asked for a full proposal for roll out. Had we not have been able to lead them to the right analytics to see the benefit maybe both e-mphasis and their client would be losing out!

Happy days

So, Why has Retail Acumen Changed?

As I describe in the earlier blog, I have recently been reflecting on past client projects. Several case studies really stood out for me – those where my team had been able to make a significant, beneficial impact in a very short period of time.

The common theme to these projects was that they focused on a specific business objective. Each required the team to undertake a considerable amount of detailed data analysis in order to present insights back to the retail client, enabling the client to focus in on activities that gave them the best result for the least effort.

So, rather than just offering generic retail consulting I have fine tuned the offer to primarily focus on delivering projects that really make a difference, massively accelerating my clients’ time to ROI, and ensuring my team was always adding value.

What are the new areas of focus?

Retail Acumen are still a team of retail experts. That’s not changed. Our new focus enables us to do more of what we do best – identify ways for retail businesses to improve performance, fast.

The areas of focus are based on the business objectives to:

• Increase Sales: Increase footfall, conversions, basket size and transaction value.
• Intensify Assortment: Improve range planning. Increase margin & stock turn. Reduce clearance.
• Improve Return on Space: Link assortment planning to space planning. Increase trading intensity & space productivity.
• Optimise Supply Chain: Achieve ideal stock distribution. Increase availability. Reduce out of stock & lost sales.

Can we help you with any of your current objectives?

If you are interested in speaking to me further about any of the above, then please give me a call on 0844 4145153. Now we’ve refined and finalised the new focus we’re really looking forward to delivering even more great success stories!

I look forward to hearing from you soon

A day in the life of a mobile shopper…

The keynote opening speaker was Hash Ladha. He’d spoken at The Retail Conference in September 2010 and in our 4 year history had been far and away the most unanimously well received speaker with the highest scores in feedback! We were obviously delighted when he agreed to support us once again at The Retail Breakfast.

Hash introduced the reality behind how the consumer is already using their mobile, highlighting how retailers could create their own success by providing a mobile-ready environment.

The truly integrated multi-channel behaviours that the mobile shopper exhibits

The talk covered the truly integrated multi-channel behaviours that the mobile shopper exhibits… e.g.

• A shopper visits a shopping centre, checking in on Foursquare, they search on their mobile phone for retailers selling what they are looking to buy today…
• Whilst visiting retailers to experience the product first hand, our shopper is also doing price comparison checks on their mobile device…
• Finding an item cheaper elsewhere that they don’t mind waiting for (delivery 2-3 days), they transact a sale via their mobile…
• Later they’ll be able to check up on the delivery status of that order, once again, on their mobile…
• Shopping continues – along with interaction with friends via social sites such as facebook and twitter… all via the mobile
• That evening, after a successful day out shopping, they take the time to provide feedback and review about their shopping experience and continue to interact on social media, telling friends about their day at the shops! ALL of this, you guessed it, took place on their mobile…

And this isn’t a view of the future, it is happening now. Hash closed with the point that the ball is now well and truly in the retailers’ court – if the UK want to achieve stats like Japan and South Korea (where 25% of all ecommerce transactions are via mobile) then the retailers need to open the door for the consumers.

Importance of local search marketing for mobile consumers…

Andrew Rayner from e-mphasis was next up after Hash, and echoed much of his sentiments. Andrew’s focus however was on the importance to retailers of deploying local internet marketing techniques (such as Google Places Optimisation) to engage the mobile consumer. This aspect of search marketing was wide open, especially for those using mobiles for search (9% of ALL traffic on mobiles is search). Andrew highlighted the relevance of this approach as part of a multi-channel search marketing strategy.

Don’t waste your money on a myriad of Apps… look what eBay have done!

Duncan and Michael from Netbiscuits covered both the technical detail of mobile commerce deployment and a case study for eBay.

For me the 2 key take outs were:

• HTML 5 will NOT be the answer to your prayers – if anyone is telling you to rebuild your website in HTML 5 to “take advantage of the mobile revolution” then they are not telling you the whole story – even the leading mobile operating systems (ios, Android, Blackberry & Windows) didn’t support ALL of the proclaimed key features and benefits of HTML 5!
• Don’t invest in a myriad of operating specific Apps… the top operating systems still only represent about 1/3rd of the traffic. Really to engage with ALL mobile users (including on tablets and WIFI gaming devices too) retailers need to look at a holistic approach to presenting a mobile ready presence, that is easy to use, fast to load and relevant to the reduced screen size. Follow the eBay example…

What are the top tips for successfully adding mobile commerce to your multi-channel strategy?

To close the event, all the speakers were invited to answer questions from the audience. The key question was “What are the top tips for successfully adding mobile commerce to your multi-channel strategy?”

The answers were:

1. You don’t have to do it first, you have to do it right – make sure the business is ready, don’t throw good money after bad, be clear on the purpose and objectives and then get going!
2. Don’t wait around for too long – this is a fast moving environment… try to think ahead, what the business needs will be, as future proofing for such a fast moving technology is very challenging!
3. Consider the needs and wants of your mobile consumer – if in fact they are out and about shopping they may only want answers to their questions – which they will put to Google! Make sure you’ve invested sufficient effort in being found when you offer the answers to their questions!
4. To echo the others, think it through, do it right, do it fast, do it now!

Who would you give as examples of retailers doing a great job in this area?

Finally, a member of the audience asked “Who would you give as examples of retailers doing a great job in this area?”

It was an interesting question to watch. The panel visibily drew breath and looked “stumped”. The fact was NONE of the panel could site any retailer YET getting this right.

The answers came back as:

1. It is still so new, no one has yet proved to be the leader…
2. The opportunity, even with the first step (mobile search) is so wide open – when a retailer does decide to go for it they will inevitably gain market share!
3. Marks and Spencer have a very powerful multi-channel capability, and are clearly spending some time on this area [the appointment of Laura Wade-Gerry from Tesco into the role of Executive Director, Multi-channel & ecommerce reinforces this] – John Lewis also may not be at the forefront of technology but everything they do they do so very well…
4. Pure play retailers are the ones who’ve invested in this – eBay, Amazon – as yet no one stands out from a multi-channel environment
5. Argos will be one to watch…

And on that note the very first Retail Breakfast event came to a close.

Each service is based on detailed analytics of a retailers business data to uncover insights that enable our team of experienced retail practitioners to present practical and pragmatic recommendations for change.

A brief description of each service area follows:

Increase Sales

This is all about 4 elements of driving more footfall / website traffic to your retail or ecommerce stores and making sure that there is the best possible chance of converting the visitor into a customer, and, increasing the average transaction value.

The 4 elements include:

1. Best practice retail operations
2. Truly multi-channel service proposition
3. Comprehensive multi-channel search marketing strategy
4. Leveraging social media to listen to and engage with customers

Intensify Assortment

This is all about making sure that the size of your range is appropriate, delivering excellent choice, but not over optioned such that sales are simply cannibalised between SKU or that the management overhead to ensure all items are in stock is not too great.

The specifics involve a first pass at range rationalisation based on cash margin drivers followed by analysis of the reduced range to ensure it still rolls up to produce a credible offer and a congruent price ladder.

Improve Return on Space

The 3rd area focuses on store specific space productivity. The insights are driven by an understanding of the unique store cost and the store margin achieved per unit of space.

Stores are ranked by relative performance and optimal space is considered to avoid issues of over-spaced stores clouding the data regarding trading intensity.

Finally, proposals are made to improve return on space for the stores that perform least well within the chain, as part of a step-by-step approach to delivering change.

Optimise Supply Chain

This, the final element of the Retail Acumen suite of analytics services that enable retailers to really address performance issues in a practical and pragmatic way focuses on the supply chain.

The starting point is analysis of the SKU-store stock distribution of a key SKU – this gives a snap-shot as to the health of a retail supply chain. This is then backed up by detailed research as to potential causal factors for any maldistribution that may be apparent, resulting in recommendations for process or systems changes.

Do you know any retailers who would like a little bit more Retail Acumen?

Now that we’ve redefined what we’re all about, and we’re in the process of migrating across to the lovely new branding you can see on this blog (thanks again to Kelly Molson’s team at Rubber Cheese), we’re looking for referrals to any retailers who would like to:

1. Increase Sales
2. Intensify Assortment
3. Improve Return on Space
4. Optimise Supply Chain

So please do let me know – you can contact me via email – clare.rayner@retailacumen.com, tweet me @retailacumen or give the office a call on 0844 414 515 3.

I look forward to hearing from you