Holiday Sales
By Darren A. Gaitan
The Holiday season is upon us and you should be gearing up for huge
pro-shop sales in November and December. In order to generate a lot
of revenue during your holiday sale you must properly plan your sale
from top to bottom. This will ensure a lot of revenue with minimal
expense and headaches.
Over the years school owners always ask why I’m so insistent on
accurately keeping track of sales and why I’m so detailed about the
process. I’ll stop sugar coating it; they want to know why I’m so
anal. Am I really like that, you ask? Absolutely! I’m the most
extreme perfectionist you’ll ever meet. Why am I like this? Well, it
all makes sense to my colleagues when a big event like a holiday
sale comes around. By having such detailed sales reports from the
previous and current years I can order merchandise based on my
students buying treads. I can also look at sales and net grosses
over any set period of time. It also saves me a lot of money because
it keeps me from spending money on items that collect dust for my
school and not money.
Here’s a great example of why you should be tracking all of your
sales in a detailed format. I had a friend who spent most of his
budget on Wave Masters from Century. During the entire course of his
sale he did not sell one and because he did not spend enough money
on low cost items that were great sellers, he quickly reached his
income potential. It was not very much. He asked me to look at his
sale and tell him where he went wrong. After looking over his sales
reports, I found that he had only sold one Wave Master in the last
14 months. Now, if he had looked at these reports before hand he
would not have made that $3000.00 mistake. This was only the tip of
the iceberg; there are stories worse than this and all were caused
by a lack of using a proper POS system.
I use QuickBooks but only for the sake of the accountant, I depend
on the MAS store for all of my detailed information. The store also
insures that another key step in the holiday sale process is
flawless. When you run out of merchandise, you should keep selling
the item and place back stock orders. In other words, keep taking
the money! Beware: only sell items on back order that you can
guarantee delivery on or before Christmas. Don’t make the mistake of
selling an item that will not be in until the end of December.
Believe me when I tell you that a parent will think of you as the
person who ruined there child’s Christmas. I have another friend who
was guilty of this and some students did not get their ordered
merchandise until February. This leads me to my next point.
The reason this happened to my friend was because he was just
entering the sales in QuickBooks but he had no system for ordering
the inventory that he had sold. His sale was successful, but the
delivery of the goods was horrible at best. He also mentioned to me
that he did see a lack of purchasing confidence from the students
which ended up costing him money in the long run. This kind of a
mistake is guaranteed to circle around the benches and among the
other parents at your school. It’s bad for business. If he had used
the MAS Store like I suggested, I would be telling you a story of
victory and not defeat. It will take some work to set up the store
with everything you’re going to sell, but the benefits are worth it.
At the end of your sale, all you have to do is print out your
inventory report, and place your orders. It that’s simple and the
chance that someone’s item did not get ordered is less than 1%. MAS
does all the work, and you keep the money. What a concept!
Another reason I want detailed sales reports down to the size and
color of each item is that it guides me on re-orders. Let’s say I’m
ordering school t-shirts for my holiday sale and I notice that I
sold more child hooded sweatshirts than non-hooded. I would probably
want to order more of this item and the same or less of the other
item. Or I look on my sheets and I notice that belt key chains from
century only sell during this time of the year. I would probably
restrict myself from ordering this item during any other time of the
year. Here’s another good example, what if I see a buying trend from
customers in Lil Dragon bags but not KidKicks? I would start
ordering more Lil Dragon bags for my sale based on the detailed
information I have available to me. These few examples show you how
I save money every year on my sale and increase my profit margins as
a result.
I have recently been using the POS system in MAS to develop a new
feature in our pro-shop. I am developing a customer rewards system
that will reward students based on past purchases. Certain items
will have certain point values to them and every time a customer
accumulates a certain point total they will receive karate bucks in
the mail. Or they can redeem the points themselves at the pro-shop.
I have not decided which way I’m going to go. I’ll probably run
monthly reports through MAS to see which students have gone over a
certain dollar amount and send them the karate bucks just in time
for our holiday sale.
In the next article I will be going over how to structure your
holiday sale and which are the best ways to maximize your profit. In
the mean time, start looking over your sales reports and put your
orders in this week. Get this done as soon as possible, don’t wait.
If you wait, you’ll lose money.
Darren A. Gaiten
Associate Consultant
ChampionsWay Inc.
877.774.5425
darren@championsway.com
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