Retailing 101

I can attest for sure listening to my husband every night after he comes home from work and by listening to the news it is hard times for the retailing industry. You can walk into any mall and you will see price slashing like never before. It was great at Christmas because the bargains were great and often. My husbands company is working hard to weather the economic storm and it isn't easy. He feels that the more negative news that gets released makes people panic more and more and hold onto their discretionary spending. Traffic counts and average sales are in constant flux which makes it hard to gage how to react to the trends. Normally the Christmas season is what makes or breaks the retail business as most of the year they operate just to make it to the Christmas Quarter to make a profit. As business try to watch their expenses more closely to protect their profit there is a fine line on what to cut and what to spend, the old saying goes "to make money sometimes you have to spend money." Marketing is a key resource that my husband likes to use during this type of economic swing. Another great resource that can help with creating an economic plan to survive these tough times would be to recruit a retail consultant to help analyse your business and to help make the hard choices on how to better manage your business in these tough economic times.Aspects that should be reviewed as part of a good consultations, one of the most important factors of any successful business is the people working for you, your employees are the base and giving them a great atmosphere to work in will improve employee relations, which will help your employees relationships with your customers. After that the next important factor would be your merchandising skills, do you have the right merchandise at the right time while offering the right price. That is really the key to good retailing, you have to provide your customers with the confidence you will be there for them and offer them a fair price structure. A good retail consulting team can really help you create a plan for your business to grow and thrive even through the tough times