“Here come the holiday hires. Here come the holiday hires. Right to your front gate.” But wait! How many? When? Rudolph, help me! I have no idea how many people are needed this holiday season. Do not fear — there’s an app for that, too. Retail Math is back to take the guesswork and mystery [Continue]

Can we talk? Does your company operate with a commission based sales team? Not too much of that in the malls so how do you motivate your sales team? How do you reward them? How do you hold them accountable specifically for selling? Let me show you a simple strategy to solve your customer service [Continue]

BACK TO THE CHALKBOARD! Let’s break down Easter Week: Thursday, April 1    Always expect about a 20% comp +trend on the day before a non-comp holiday. People get excited the day before a holiday and it creates traffic. Reference the Thursday before Good Friday last year. What was the volume? How did it compare to an [Continue]

Forecasting your sales during a holiday shift is one of the more daunting tasks retailers face. The spring holidays can be especially complex due to the varied spring break holidays. College spring breaks are not as big a factor for most markets but clearly impact college towns and destination markets on some level. NOTE: Multi-unit [Continue]

FORECASTING is one of the most critical skills needed in your arsenal. It confounds a lot of folks because it is based in percentages but you must tackle this retail math to be an accomplished retail leader. Once you conquer the math, you will be able to accurately forecast the day, week, month, remainder of [Continue]

BACK TO THE CHALKBOARD! What are the financial measures that you should know and understand how to impact? Let’s take a look at some basic metrics and how they are calculated. GROSS INCOME = Sales minus the Cost of Goods (Includes actual production costs, shipping.) The book costs $10 to make. It retails for $20. [Continue]

MATH!  It either confounds you or you love it!  When I was working on my Masters Degree in Education (a couple of years ago), I was awarded a graduate assistant position teaching ninth grade Algebra.  Dear lord, what had I got myself into? Ninth grade really?  Oh yeah, boys, girls, giggling, passing notes (there were [Continue]