/U/Productivity

Having reliable rostering software, like goRoster, means that you know who is working in your business at any given time. It’s a great tool to help you manage your staff without having to be on site 24/7. What it doesn’t tell you, however, is whether staff members are actually working the hours they are rostered for.

That’s where a time and attendance system comes in handy. It digitally captures the exact times that staff start and end their shifts. You then know exactly how long your staff are working, and can pay them accordingly. These systems are becoming commonplace in businesses throughout the world, as digital technology continues to make them a cost-effective solution.

Implementing such a system can have a big impact on the day-to-day running of your business, so here are a few things you should consider before taking the plunge:

Accurate payroll

If you’re unhappy with the accuracy of your payroll, upgrading your time and attendance system could be your new best friend.

Modern time and attendance systems can calculate payroll to the nearest minute, helping you to avoid spending money on unproductive hours, or errors related to staff clocking in or out incorrectly.

Trends

Implementing a time and attendance system can help find trends that you may be unaware of when just looking at a roster.

Are staff being consistently sent home early because it’s too quiet, or regularly working overtime because it is too busy? Being able to record your staff’s actual hours against the roster helps to plan shifts for the coming weeks, months and years. You may need to rethink your opening hours, increase or decrease staff at certain hours, or change the shift plan altogether.

Integration

There’s no point upgrading your time and attendance system if it isn’t going to talk to your current roster software. Having to manually compare data between two unintegrated systems is difficult, time consuming and prone to errors, so make sure the new system you choose is compatible.

Integrity

As solid as your staff management processes may be, it is impossible to keep an eye on everything your staff are doing. The time and attendance system you choose needs to help seal loopholes that allow staff to bypass procedures. If, for example, staff are using swipe cards or pass words to clock in, these can easily shared with colleagues to use if they are running late. It’s an awful thought, and one that businesses with great staff never have to worry about, but it does happen.

Gotcha!

If you are considering implementing a time and attendance system to assist in catching out staff members that you believe to be shirking hours, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.

You’re most likely already aware of your staff’s shortcomings, so a new system will only tell you – albeit in plain black and white – what you already know. And in our experience, it won’t change the behaviour of staff member X anyway.

This is an issue that needs to be handled by management, and is not a good reason to implement new technology.

Slow movers don’t just take up space, they tie up your capital and leave you with less funds to invest in your business.

There are plenty of ways to sell slow-moving or surplus inventory, and one of the most popular methods is to re-merchandise your stock.

To help you do that, we caught up with Christine Guillot, a retail consultant and the founder of Merchant Method. Retail merchandising is one of Christine’s specialties and in our chat, she shares invaluable insights into merchandise planning and execution.

Read on below to learn:

• How to plan your retail merchandising and mitigate risk
• What to do when you’re stuck with slow-moving inventory
• The biggest mistakes retailers make when it comes to merchandising
• Merchandising tactics to implement right now to ensure a successful holiday season

How can retailers sell slow-moving stock?

Christine shares 5 remerchandising tactics for dealing with slow-moving inventory. They include:

Re-merchandising tip #1: Pre-schedule your merchandising efforts

“Pre-schedule when your merchandise moves will take place, even before you know what your fast and slow-sellers are,” advises Christine.

“When you have a practice of pre-scheduling moves, you’re more likely to maintain a level of merchandising freshness. So whether you’re responding to slow-moving stock or fast-moving inventory, or even if you’re addressing a local trend, having that time identified in a schedule will allow you to be more responsive to the business versus being reactionary and scrambling to squeeze in re-merchandising.”

As for when to schedule your moves, Christine recommends giving items two to three weeks once they’re out of the box. This will give you enough time to measure item performance and understand the factors that might be causing a product to underperform.

Why do this? According to her, pre-scheduling your merchandising efforts and allocating manpower in advance can serve as insurance. Taking these steps means you automatically have a plan B for slow-movers, and you won’t end up not knowing what to do with them.

Re-merchandising tip #2: Consider complementary items

“Consider complementary items and merchandise accordingly. Slow movers could gain momentum if they’re an add-on to something that’s more desirable. A slow-mover might also benefit from the fact that it’s placed beside a top-performing item.”

Christine adds, “when you understand the areas of your store that are financially productive, when you understand what fixtures and displays attract a lot of attention and where last-minute add-ons take place, complementary merchandising becomes easier.”

Check out the example below, and notice how the retailer cleverly put together items that complemented each other to form an attractive retail display. See if you can pull off something similar in your store. Go through your slow-movers and then merchandise them together with best-sellers that complement their purpose or appearance.

Re-merchandising tip #3: Double- or triple-expose your merchandise

You want to get the products in more places to test the customers’ eyes, says Christine. That’s why she recommends that you “double- or even triple-expose your merchandise in a way that authentically aligns with the customer’s behavior.”

So, strive to put your products in additional areas in your location. You might even consider doing something more high-touch, such as a demonstration area if it makes sense for the product.

Re-merchandising tip #4: Turn your employees into mobile merchandising statements

Make selling a slow-mover a weekend-long or a week-long focus and be sure to involve your sales team. According to Christine, your sales team can be utilized as “mobile merchandising statements that help move your products.

“Here’s an example: Say you lead a store that sells kitchen and entertaining merchandise. You might have these seasonal print aprons that are slow-moving. Your week-long focus could be around hosting a dinner party, and maybe your employees could wear those seasonally focused aprons all week long while on the sales floor.”

“Doing this gives a reason and an occasion to speak about a particular item more,” she adds.

Re-merchandising tip #5: Have a different merchandising strategy for each location

If you’re running multiple stores, Christine recommends changing up your merchandising strategy for each store. Doing so can help minimize risk later in the item’s lifecycle.

“If we took the seasonal apron, for example, you might have stores in climates that are attributed as hot stores that can support a warm weather themed statement longer.”

“It would really benefit you to think through each store’s attributes and how you can utilize them later in the product’s lifecycle to vary the merchandising strategy.”

What are the biggest merchandising mistakes retailers make?

Christine also shared some of the top retail merchandising blunders that could lead to lower sales. Read through them below and ensure that you’re not committing any of these mistakes in your store.

Merchandising mistake #1: Taking a “set in and forget it” approach

According to Christine, having a “set it and forget it” mindset is the top merchandising mistake that retailers make.

“Does a particular display need to be straightened often because customers are looking through it a lot? If they’re touching it a lot, you need to give it attention. On the flip side, has a display been gathering dust? If so, is it because customers are overlooking it, or could it be the case of employees neglecting the display?”

“Whatever the case, it’s important to pay attention to what’s getting touched and what’s getting ignored, and then take action accordingly. Just because a display is all set up, doesn’t mean you can forget about it.”

Merchandising mistake #2: Not re-merchandising often enough

This applies to both slow-movers and bestsellers, says Christine.

“Sometimes taking a best-selling basic item and putting it in a new location can feel make it feel like a brand new item to someone who’s a loyal customer. The same goes for slow-moving stock. When you re-merchandise often, you give customers reasons to come back and explore.”

What merchandising steps should retailers take right now to prepare for the holiday season?

Christine outlines 3 pre-season merchandising steps to ensure that you’re not dealing with too much dead stock during the holidays. Check them out below and take action sooner rather than later!

Step 1: Get inspired

“Gathering inspiration is really the most romantic, sexy part of merchandising,” shares Christine.

“This is the stage when you ask the question: what experience do you want to deliver during the holiday season and how do you want to create that experience?”

“So there tends to be a lot of creative research, either online through places like Pinterest, or in-person, through competitive shopping. This is the time to dream big. You should be partnering with buying teams and marketing teams to create a cohesive, comprehensive merchandising strategy.”

Step 2: Plan your merchandising

“After your dream big, you need to make your plans,” she says.

At this stage, retailers usually start creating a sales floor map, and that’s critical. But Christine also stressed the importance of creating a stockroom map.

“Remember, you’ll be dealing with increased traffic and transactions, which means the floors need to be re-stocked more frequently. If you can create a stockroom map, that will promote efficient re-stocking.”

Christine recommends thinking through your planned sales and top-performing items. Pre-identify the products you expect to move through most often and determine how much inventory depth you’re expecting to re-stock the store with.

Doing this “allows you to map out shelf locations and the shelf space you’ll need by category, or even by item. If there are certain things that are going to be marketed or promoted heavily, those are the items that you want in very accessible locations. The last thing you want is to go way back into the stockroom and get a ladder to access items that only pop during the holiday season.”

In addition to mapping out your sales floor and stockroom, be sure to take the time to create a schedule and determine the resources you’ll need to execute your holiday plans.

“Do you need material resources, monetary resources, or more staffing? During this planning phase, create smart goals and make timelines. I’m a huge proponent of pre-planning and in-season reviews. This is the time to schedule in-season reviews of execution and when you’ll course correct if you need to.”

Step 3: Mitigate risk

You’ll want to mitigate risks pre-season, says Christine. The main thing to do at this stage is to track your inventory.

“Will you receive your seasonal merchandise when you expect to, or are there unforeseen delays? Have you been selling more or less of certain items in the months leading up to the holidays? If so, you might want to make adjustments to your orders.”

“Knowing these things ahead of time is critical. When your create your display and that beautiful merchandising, you need to have the inventory to support it.”

Bottom line: You don’t have to sweat the slow-movers

The keys to having a successful remerchandising strategy are to plan for it in advance and ensure that your sales team is on board. Don’t wait until you have a bunch of slow-movers on the floor before crafting a game plan. Think about your strategy now, and keep your associates in the loop. That way, when you do have to deal with slow-sellers, you can jump into action right away.

And if remerchandising doesn’t work, recognize that you still have plenty of chances to move your inventory. Don’t sweat the surplus stock. Find ways to turn slow-movers into profitable opportunities instead.

According to Sanford “Sandy” Stein, the author of RETAIL SCHMETAIL and the founder and moderator of RETAIL SPEAK on LinkedIn, the retail industry is ripe with opportunity for SMBs. We recently caught up with him, and we had an insightful discussion on why now is the best time to start a retail business, and what merchants — particularly SMBs — should do to stay competitive.

Check out what he has to say below.

Four reasons why there has never been a better time to launch or become an omnichannel retailer.

According to Sandy, here are the top reasons why now is a great time to launch a retail business:

1. Low barrier to entry

“The barrier to entry has never been lower,” says Sandy. According to him, the internet has had a flattening effect on the industry, and as a result, “even the smallest retailer” has tremendous opportunity to launch and thrive.

Costs are also lower. “The advertising costs have never been lower, because of the power of social media. Independents can develop a following at a relatively low cost if they have a product or service that people are passionate about.”

“Access to both software and hardware to empower selling is also cheaper, and it enables small retailers to develop a bond and an understanding of what their customers want. That, in turn, lets them offer a high level of product and service.”

2. Shoppers are drawn to SMB retailers

Secondly, Sandy says that shoppers today are more inclined to prop up small businesses.

“You’ve got the Shop Small movement. You’ve got the Buy Local movement. There are companies like American Express supporting small business people. Independent retailers really excel at building relationships with customers.”

“We’ve watched even independent booksellers go from having a really terrible time to becoming a healthy niche. Even a bookseller in this day and age that’s well-focused can succeed, and many of the indies that’s survived the retail shake-out are building new stores.”

Smaller retailers also have a lot going for them in the marketing and customer service departments.

“The opportunity for proximity marketing, and keeping that hyperlocal focus is easy for a small business as it is for large. If they’re playing their cards right, they’re going to have higher margins, which is going to allow for additional investments. ”

3. Digital natives have a huge advantage

If you already have an online brand or store, then you’re in a great position to set up shop offline.

Sandy points to retailers such as Warby Parker and Shinola, which started off as online pure-plays, but successfully opened offline stores because they had a unique concept and a passionate customer base.

4. There are many product and service niches yet to be discovered

“I believe there are still many product and service niches that businesses can develop into viable and successful retail concepts,” says Sandy.

Some of these include craft movements and make-tailing, outdoor activities with immersive discovery, artisanal foods and beverages, and more.

The 5 traits every retailer needs to succeed in today’s market

While the retail industry offers plenty of opportunities for merchants, it’s still a highly competitive environment. Here are the traits you need to win in the current retail landscape:

1. Be an experience-first type of store

Emotions drive the sale, says Sandy, which is why he advises retailers to put the customer experience first. As the founder of his own retail design firm, Sandy shares that they often helped their clients rebrand and deal with commoditization

“If price is your only differentiator, then you have a commodity. You don’t have something special, so it becomes a race to the bottom.”

How can you overcome commoditization? He says you need to think about your shoppers and create experiences around your product so you go from commodity-based selling to solution-based selling.

“Here’s a good example. We had a client that sold aftermarket parts for pickup trucks and jeeps. People would buy their products to improve the look and performance of their cars. We explained to them that their stores looked just like others parts stores, and they were not leveraging the emotional connection a customer has with their vehicle.”

“[The client] had to create an emotion around the sale, and talk about how a customer likes to use their vehicle, rather than the part they’re trying to find.”

Doing this allows retailers to build a bond with the shopper and create customer lifetime value.

“Another part of experience-first is creating immersive experiences that are tied to things that people like to do, he adds.

“[For instance,] as baby boomers age and retire, we want to bond with millennial kids. To address this, companies that are selling things for outdoor experience could create concierge services (e.g., vacation planning, immersive destination experiences). These things emphasize the experience over the product, which then leads to improving the lifetime customer value over the transactional value.”

2. Be authentic

The second trait is authenticity. As Sandy puts it, these days, “we’re all looking for more value in our life than just acquiring stuff. There’s been a tremendous movement toward products that express authentic values and stories.”

“My friend Joe Pine, who wrote The Experience Economy, says, ‘You can’t tell somebody it’s authentic. If you do, it isn’t authentic.’”

“In other words, a business has to feel authentic. It has to have all of the earmarks of authenticity.”

One example of an authentic retailer? Shinola, an upscale merchant that sells watches, bikes, leather goods, and curated gift items.

“Their founder created the term “make-tailing,” which highlights the craftsmanship and the training they do to enable people that have been out of work to find a new craft and to build their products in the United States.”

“All of their products are handmade and assembled by people who in many cases hadn’t previously had a job. As a result, Shinola has high brand value because it is authentic and it revolves around things that have a lasting value in terms of their quality.”

3. Be an authority in your niche

Being an authority in your category and having a deep and unparalleled understanding of your niche will help you stay competitive. Being laser focused “enables you to create the perception that you’re the place to go,” mentions Sandy.

Many retailers accomplish this through things like mass customization.

“Again, Shinola’s really good at this. You go into the store and you can build your own watch. You can pick the face you want, the body of the watch you want, and the type of band you want. You’re making the product just for you, and that gives you a sense of high personal connection.”

Sandy also mentions Bucketfeet, a footwear retailer that has grown its authority by enabling customers to personalize their shoes. They “hire designers all over the world to create designs that go on their shoe in limited production, and give each one of those designers a small amount of the sale of every shoe.”

Bucketfeet even has an area within their store where people can come in in groups. They start with a white shoe, decorate it, and take it with them. That type of personalization gives a higher margin, a more special product, and a personal connection with the brand.”

4. Promote sustainability

“Sustainability has to be built into the brand,” says Sandy. “Sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution all have to make efficient use of products, energy, and people — aka the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.”

Consider what jewelry retailer Kendra Scott is doing. The company was about sustainability from day one, shares Sandy.

“They’re very big into giving back. In 2016, Kendra donated to over 3500 organizations throughout the world. They have three components to their business: family, fashion, and philanthropy. She treats her associates and her customers like family. That bond creates the basis for a culture that has been heralded as having amazing brand value because of how she runs her business.

5. Be channel agnostic

“Channel agnosticism should be built into the culture. In this day and age, it’s no longer a case of either/or when it comes to shopping online or in-store. There’s almost no future in retail that doesn’t transact in every space, in every platform from online to in-store, and back and forth.”

He adds, that “understanding how that works is really essential, and culture has to lead the technology. There’s a lot going on right now in terms of bringing technology into retail. There’s a lot of companies that are falling all over themselves, trying to figure out what they’re going to do with all the newest technology.”

“But unless you start with a culture that understands how omnichannel works, you’re never going to have the right technology. [Having a channel agnostic culture] enables you to make appropriate investments in technology, so you can then teach it through your entire business, and empower salespeople to use tech to provide a customer-first experience.”