Do you comply strictly with all security regulations and insist that everyone else in your department also comply?
Do you insist that sales people verify with you or your assistant the prices of garments from which tickets have become detached?
Are you careful to get a receipt for goods loaned to other departments, or for display, or for fashion shows? And do you follow up to get the goods back?
Have you trained yourself and your assistants never to make an on-the-spot price reduction for a customer without an immediate entry in the markdown book?
Have you trained yourself and your assistants to check every count, price, and price change carefully before passing invoices, charge backs, markdowns, and transfer to the Accounting Office?
Do you fix responsibility and encourage care by requiring that counts, price changes, etc., handled for you by sales people or assistants be initialed by the person who does the job?
If price changes are made on the selling floor, do you insist upon having the procedure supervised by someone familiar with both prices and price-change procedure?
Are you especially watchful of counts and prices on transfers to and from branches? People tend to be careless about checking when the transfer is "all in the family".
At inventory time, do you insist upon strict compliance with rules laid down by the Controller's Office? Do you and your assistants supervise to make sure instructions are followed?
Do you insist upon strict compliance with store rules for handling cash, for issuance of credit slips, etc.?
If you have reason to suspect dishonesty among your sales people, can you get your controller to pinpoint the registers at which discrepancies occur most often? Or can you get your Protection Department to bring its expertise to bear upon the problem?
Can you have the Protection Department (or a local police officer) talk to your sales people about how to guard against shoplifters?
Can you have the Protection Department (or a local police officer) check over your layout and stock arrangements for possible situations that encourage shoplifting?
If yours is a busy, theft-prone department, can you have a watchful "hostess" circulating very obviously on the floor and in the fitting rooms during peak selling hours?
Do you insist upon a high standard of departmental housekeeping? A messy department implies negligence and encourages shoplifting.
Do you occasionally spot-check the paper work of your assistants and sales people? And let it be known that you do? Supervision discourages carelessness.
Have you explained to your people that shortages reflect unfavorably upon the entire personnel of a department? Have you asked them to help you by trying a little harder to avoid errors? In the continuing battle against shortages, good esprit decorps is a powerful weapon.
High Workroom Costs
Although you may not manage the workroom, you can help keep its cost to your department down.
- Educate fitters. They should know how current fashions are meant to look, so that they do not spoil garments and invite customer rejection. Common fault: Trying to make new neck lines, waistlines, sleeves, etc. look like those of the year before.
- Educate sales people. Review matters of size and fit, so that they don't expect fitters to do the impossible. Even though the customer pays for alterations, if the garment looks wrong for her after the workroom has finished with it, she may refuse to accept it.
- Minimize demands. Every time the workroom makes a repair or adjustment on a garment in your stock, you are probably charged for the time. If the repair is due to the vendor's carelessness, see what you can do about charging the cost back to him.
- Handle inventory with care. Constant reminders and your own good example are usually needed to keep sales people aware of the cost of repairing carelessly inflicted merchandise damage.
Do you insist upon at least the prevailing discount in the industries you patronize?
Are there occasions when you should "load" in order to get adequate discount?
Do you insist on advance dating if you accept early delivery as an accommodation to the vendor?
Do you ask for extended dating if you buy early or in larger than normal quantities, as an accommodation to the vendor?
Do you check incoming merchandise and pass bills through to the Accounting Office without delay?
Have you made sure that vendors will permit anticipation if the store wishes to prepay its bills?
Gross Margin
In simplest terms, gross margin is the difference between your net sales and the final net cost of the goods sold.
Gross margin percentage is expressed as a percentage of net sales. Gross margin is a result, rather than a figure you can manipulate directly.
To improve your gross margin, bring your efforts to bear upon improving your initial markon, your markdowns, workroom costs, shortages, and cash discounts. Review the checklists under each of these headings.
High Selling Salaries Percentage
Do you actually need all the sales and stock help you now have? Do you schedule your sales people with relation to the anticipated flow of customer traffic? Consider both days of week and hours of day.
Do you schedule vacations to coincide with slack rather than busy weeks?
Can you use part-timers in place of full-timers to a greater extent than you now do?
Can you adjust the layout of your department for more efficient selling? This may mean:
- removing physical obstacles that could prevent sales people at one end of the department from coming to serve customers at the other
- placing registers and wrapping desks conveniently
- stocking related items close to one another, so that suggestion selling is made easier.
High Advertising Cost Percentage
Are you getting all the cooperative advertising funds available to you from your resources?
Do you pass along to the advertising department useful promotional aids mailed to you by resources and publications?
Have you made your reports of advertising results as accurate and constructive as possible?
Can you exchange ideas with other buyers in your store? With those you meet at your resident office and in the market?
Are you taking full advantage of ad-induced customer traffic by:
- having adequate stocks of featured items, looks, prices?
- keeping basic items in consistently good supply at all times?
- keeping a steady flow of new, exciting fashions coming into the department?
- overlooking no opportunity to show how your merchandise links up with the looks featured in other departments of your store?
- inviting other departments to build related-item displays around your advertised merchandise?
