1. Reduce Shrinkage

You may believe employee theft and shoplifting aren't a problem in your business, but simple pricing mistakes can also cost retailers quite a bit. The average shrink percentage in the retail industry is about two percent of sales. Learn to identify and reduce sources of shrink.

2. Increase Sales Opportunities

Whether you're up-selling to a customer or planning an expansion into a multi-channel environment, retailers should learn to notice and take advantage of every possible opportunity to sell.

3. Improve Customer Service

One easy way to better your business is to improve customer service. Retailers should develop customer-friendly policies, train employees to provide outstanding customer service, and learn how to create customer loyalty.

4. Add New Products or Product Lines

One way to keep customers returning to your shop is by offering new and exciting products. When adding new products or expanding product lines, keep in mind that not only should there be a demand for the item, but it must also be profitable and something you enjoy selling.

5. Buy From Vendors with Best Value

The vendor who sales an item at the lowest price isn't necessarily the vendor you want to buy from. When selecting a supplier, consider shipping, terms of sale and other factors to determine the vendor with the best value. These small details may erode a retailers bottom line.

6. Increase Marketing

How often have you said you can't afford to advertise right now? Maybe once business picks up you'll place an ad. Or maybe you're holding those advertising dollars until the holiday shopping begins. Either way, you could be losing potential customers right now. Begin tailoring your marketing efforts to your target audience. If you don't spread the word, no one will know you exist.

7. Lower Expenses

To better your business and return more profits to your bottom line, learn where you can cut operating expenses. Look around your shop. Could buying instead of leasing save money? Are you outsourcing something you could easily do?

8. Get Out of the Store

Attend a trade show or other retail expo. These conferences are developed in order to give retail owners, buyers and managers the opportunity to meet existing suppliers, conduct business meetings, network with others in retail and investigate new products.

9. Add One New Time or Money Saving Piece of Technology

Every time we invest in a new piece of technology, we're always amazed at the results and wonder how we lived without it for so long. Find one new money or time saving piece of technology to implement in your store this year. For example, if you are using manual cash registers, consider a POS system.

10. Provide Training for Staff

Once you've determined how to best implement the nine ways to better your business listed above, pass that information on to your staff. Your retail employees are the ones on the front-line every day and should be trained to reduce shrink, improve customer service and increase sales opportunities.

Greetings for all!  It's a long time since a blog has been posted here. I would like to share some useful terminologies from A to Z of retail business industry. Hope it's useful especially for the newbies...

APO

It's abbreviated as Allocated Purchase Order and it's basically nothing but a PO (Purchase order) which holds products developed for delivering to a single location (later on delivering to final locations) unlike the ordinary PO which intends to get delivered to various locations.

Black Friday

Black Friday is usually the Friday after thanksgiving day. In retail business, it is usually considered to be a strenuous retail day of shopping in a particular year.

Certegy

This terminology might sound like a new one but it was called 'Equifax' formerly. Certegy is a verification service for merchants to check the Cheques so that fraudulence can be avoided.

Drop-ship

Drop-ship is referred to a product which will be shipping to your customer directly from the supplier.

Etailer

An etailer is a merchant who sells retail products via the internet

FOB

FOB is Freight On Board. It's a term of shipping marking that the product (freight) expenses are covered to the particular destination.

Grid Cell

When the 2 dimensions (color and size) of a matrix intersect, it's called Grid cell.

Hang tag

In order to elucidate the product, a manufacturer label is introduced and this label is called as the Hang tag.

Invoice

A procedure describing owing between entities.

Journal

The transactions undertaken are recorded in an electronic way which is called journal.

KM

KM is the acronym of Keystone Markup. It will be equaling the product cost most often.

Last Cost

The pricing of the most recently purchased product.

MOTO

It means Mail Order (or) Telephone Order. Transactions assumed to the cards that are not present ( there's no swiping of cards)

Net Terms

This term pertains to invoice billed amount calling sans allowing discounts.

Overage

It is calculated as an amount of which the book inventory is exceeded by a physical inventory.

Planogram

An illustrative drawing of fixtures of retail store about the products.

Quantity Discount

Cost reduction based on the sales volume.

Rotating Stock

The process involving new product stockings replacements in the place of older products.

SVC

SVC is Stored Value Card. This is basically a common gift card involving magnetic stripes which will be processed by a MSR (Magnetic Stripe Reader) device.

Tearsheet

The original copy of a retail ad.

Unallocated

It's a purchase order or request where are ordered products are set ready to get delivered to a specific location.

Vouchering

Vouchering is a process which involves making of payable vouchers of accounts.

Wardrobing

It deals with refunding of a particular product to the store after using the product.

X-efficiency

X-efficiency is the ability with which a product is able to be produced with the available inputs.

Yield Curve

It is a graph to demonstrate the yields pertaining to the production of a particular product.

Zero Inventories

It's a stage when the unwanted terms are discarded possessing only the needed products.

 Hope this was a bit of rewind to our industry knowledge...