Retail Sales Quotes

Marketing is an investment. Don’t treat it like sales.

The last thing the consumer index wants men and women to do is to figure out how to love one another: The $1.5 trillion retail-sales industry depends on sexual estrangement between men and women, and is fueled by sexual dissatisfaction. Ads do not sell sex--that would be counterproductive, if it meant that heterosexual women and men turned to one another and were gratified. What they sell is sexual discontent.

Whoever had coined the phrase, ‘the customer is always right,’ had clearly never worked in retail or customer service. And if they had, well, then they’d need to be hauled out into the street and beaten to death with plastic spoons.

I did discover that if you're interested in low wages, a bookstore ranks below retail clothing sales, except the hours are worse.

The way an angry Canadian shopper argues with a retail sales associate who believes the customer is always right is like watching two ducks fight. It’s as harmless as two pillows on a bed, and watching is liable to put you to sleep.

In 1953, at the beginning of the Eisenhower era and the glory years of the auto industry, Hudson’s had done $153 million in retail sales; in 1981 the downtown Hudson’s had done only $44 million—a figure, if adjusted for inflation, about 6 percent of the 1953 total.

One early challenge was that the book distributors required retailers to order ten books at a time. Amazon didn’t yet have that kind of sales volume, and Bezos later enjoyed telling the story of how he got around it. “We found a loophole,” he said. “Their systems were programmed in such a way that you didn’t have to receive ten books, you only had to order ten books. So we found an obscure book about lichens that they had in their system but was out of stock. We began ordering the one book we wanted and nine copies of the lichen book. They would ship out the book we needed and a note that said, ‘Sorry, but we’re out of the lichen book.’ ”4

Fast forward to 2014, and Wal-Mart has over $480 billion in sales and employs more than 2.2 million people that serve more than 200 million customers each week at more than 11,000 retail stores in 27 countries worldwide.

I don’t think any other retail company in the world could do what I’m going to propose to you. It’s simple. It won’t cost us anything. And I believe it would just work magic, absolute magic on our customers, and our sales would escalate, and I think we’d just shoot past our Kmart friends in a year or two and probably Sears as well. I want you to take a pledge with me. I want you to promise that whenever you come within ten feet of a customer, you will look him in the eye, greet him, and ask him if you can help him. Now I know some of you are just naturally shy, and maybe don’t want to bother folks. But if you’ll go along with me on this, it would, I’m sure, help you become a leader. It would help your personality develop, you would become more outgoing, and in time you might become manager of that store, you might become a department manager, you might become a district manager, or whatever you choose to be in the company. It will do wonders for you. I guarantee it. Now, I want you to raise your right hand—and remember what we say at Wal-Mart, that a promise we make is a promise we keep—and I want you to repeat after me: From this day forward, I solemnly promise and declare that every time a customer comes within ten feet of me, I will smile, look him in the eye, and greet him. So help me Sam.

While Millions of jobs have been created in retail sales to move the mountains of imports, the manufacturing jobs that enabled Americans with high school diplomas to live the American Dream have been shipped and created overseas…. In building their new world, our elites treat fellow Americans like obsolete equipment.

The starting point for ‘discounts’ may be the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), an arbitrarily high price that no one will ever pay. By crossing out the high MSRP, retailers are handing shoppers a psychological victory that will make them feel good about the purchase, even if the discounted price is still expensive.

For the record, this is Joe Girard: Most average number of retail vehicles sold in one day--6 Most new retail sales in one day-18 Most new retail sales in one month-174 Most new retail sales in one year-1,425 Most new retail vehicles ever sold in a fifteen-year career- 13,001 Number one retail vehicle salesperson-12 consecutive years Joe's

Globally, international retail sales are expected to reach an eye-watering $31 trillion by 2025. To keep that thermonuclear consumption going, not only do the products we buy need manufacturing, but so too do our desires for them. Hence, in the past forty or so years, the public relations, marketing, advertising and finance industries have boomed.

Buying something you do not need is a waste of money, even if it is a bargain.

For example, local retailers seeking to rev up sales activity can send out promotional messages to consumers within the vicinity or even to people in a competitor’s store.

Apple Stores produce more sales per square foot than any other retailer in the United States, including luxury stores like Tiffany.

RULE #1 Market your business to the customer YOU WANT. Most beauty businesses try to be everything to everyone. It's exhausting and expensive promoting yourself to everyone. Most people simply give up. Focus on the customers you really want. What is your passion, what do you excel in? Who is your ideal customer? What would you ideally like to do every day in your business? Focus on what you want to do and the clients you want, and market directly to them and only them.

The last thing the consumer index wants men women to do is to figure out how to love one another: The 1.5$ trillion retail-sales industry depends on sexual estrangement between men and women, and is fueled by sexual dissatisfaction. Ads do not sell sex—that would be counterproductive, [...] What they sell is sexual discontent.

Every year or so I like to take a step back and look at a few key advertising, marketing, and media facts just to gauge how far removed from reality we advertising experts have gotten. These data represent the latest numbers I could find. I have listed the sources below. So here we go -- 10 facts, direct from the real world: E-commerce in 2014 accounted for 6.5 percent of total retail sales. 96% of video viewing is currently done on a television. 4% is done on a web device. In Europe and the US, people would not care if 92% of brands disappeared. The rate of engagement among a brand's fans with a Facebook post is 7 in 10,000. For Twitter it is 3 in 10,000. Fewer than one standard banner ad in a thousand is clicked on. Over half the display ads paid for by marketers are unviewable. Less than 1% of retail buying is done on a mobile device. Only 44% of traffic on the web is human. One bot-net can generate 1 billion fraudulent digital ad impressions a day. Half of all U.S online advertising - $10 billion a year - may be lost to fraud. As regular readers know, one of our favorite sayings around The Ad Contrarian Social Club is a quote from Noble Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, who wonderfully declared that “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” I think these facts do a pretty good job of vindicating Feynman.

To re-create the entrepreneurial atmosphere of the sort we’d had at Chouinard Equipment, we broke the line into eight categories and hired eight product czars to manage them. Each was responsible for his or her own product development, marketing, inventory, quality control, and coordination with the three sales channels—wholesale, mail order, and retail.

RIM shipped PlayBooks to major retail clients, such as Best Buy, which had preserved premium display space for the new product. Unfortunately, RIM had neglected to create a demo program to showcase and explain its latest product. With no helpful presentation on the screen of the device, shoppers were left to rummage around PlayBook programs on their own. Countless PlayBooks were immobilized after customers armed the devices with passwords, which the sales staff couldn’t unlock. “This happened hundreds of times,” says McDowell.

In fact, as these companies offered more and more (simply because they could), they found that demand actually followed supply. The act of vastly increasing choice seemed to unlock demand for that choice. Whether it was latent demand for niche goods that was already there or a creation of new demand, we don't yet know. But what we do know is that the companies for which we have the most complete data - netflix, Amazon, Rhapsody - sales of products not offered by their bricks-and-mortar competitors amounted to between a quarter and nearly half of total revenues - and that percentage is rising each year. in other words, the fastest-growing part of their businesses is sales of products that aren't available in traditional, physical retail stores at all. These infinite-shelf-space businesses have effectively learned a lesson in new math: A very, very big number (the products in the Tail) multiplied by a relatives small number (the sales of each) is still equal to a very, very big number. And, again, that very, very big number is only getting bigger. What's more, these millions of fringe sales are an efficient, cost-effective business. With no shelf space to pay for - and in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees - a niche product sold is just another sale, with the same (or better) margins as a hit. For the first time in history, hits and niches are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.

All the recent marketing successes have been PR successes, not advertising successes. To name a few: Starbucks, The Body Shop, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, eBay, Palm, Google, Linus, PlayStation, Harry Potter, Botox, Red Bull, Microsoft, Intel, and BlackBerry. A closer look at the history of most major brands shows this to be true. As a matter of fact, an astonishing number of well-known brands have been built with virtually no advertising at all. Anita Roddick built The Body Shop into a worldwide brand without any advertising. Instead she traveled the world looking for ingredients for her natural cosmetics, a quest that resulted in endless publicity. Until recently Starbucks didn’t spend a hill of beans on advertising either. In its first ten years, the company spent less that $10 million (total) on advertising in the United States, a trivial amount for a brand that delivers annual sales of $1.3 billion today. Wal-Mart became the world’s largest retailer, ringing up sales approaching $200 billion, with little advertising. Sam’s Club, a Wal-Mart sibling, averages $56 million per store with almost no advertising. In the pharmaceutical field, Viagra, Prozac, and Vioxx became worldwide brands with almost no advertising. In the toy field, Beanie Babies, Tickle Me Elmo, and Pokémon became highly successful brands with almost no advertising. In the high-technology field, Oracle, Cisco, and SAP became multibillion-dollar companies (and multibillion-dollar brands) with almost no advertising.

What we're now starting to see, as online retailers begin to capitalize on their extraordinary economic efficiences, is the shape of a massive mountain of choice emerging where before there was just a peak.... By necessity, the conomics of traditional, hit-driven retail limit choice. When you dramatically lower the costs of connecting supply and demand, it changes not just the numbers, but the entire nature of the market. This is not just a quantiative change, but a qualitative one, too. Bringing niches within reach reveals latent demand for noncommercial content. Then, as demand shifts toward the niches, the economics of provided them improve further, and so on, creating a positive feedback loop that will transform entire industries - and the culture - for decades to come.

What’s really worried me over the years is not our stock price, but that we might someday fail to take care of our customers, or that our managers might fail to motivate and take care of our associates. I also was worried that we might lose the team concept, or fail to keep the family concept viable and realistic and meaningful to our folks as we grow. Those challenges are more real than somebody’s theory that we’re headed down the wrong path. As business leaders, we absolutely cannot afford to get all caught up in trying to meet the goals that some retail analyst or financial institution in New York sets for us on a ten-year plan spit out of a computer that somebody set to compound at such-and-such a rate. If we do that, we take our eye off the ball. But if we demonstrate in our sales and our earnings every day, every week, every quarter, that we’re doing our job in a sound way, we will get the growth we are entitled to, and the market will respect us in a way that we deserve.

mark-down, which discounts the selling price to customers and, so long as demand is ‘elastic’, results in increased sales of the product line. However, this is an expensive method of selling products, as it reduces the profit achieved on the products. In fact mark-down is the single largest cost to a fashion retail business after the cost of the products themselves. It is worth remembering at this point that the main – and frequently only – source of income for a fashion retailer is the profit from the sales of its products. Less profit per garment means less income to pay its bills. Furthermore, this tactic is less effective when general trading conditions are poor, as the competition is usually doing the same thing. It is vital then that the fashion retailer knows what its customers want and are expecting. Problems in defining and then keeping up with changing customer needs and expectations are arguably the most important factor in successful selling. Large retail businesses like Marks & Spencer

We had heard rumours of what people referred to as a ‘phantom accounting system’, also called zappers and phantom ware. This phenomenon was unheard of in South Africa at the time. The more formal term used to describe this kind of criminal financial-management software is a ‘sales-suppression system’. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in which South Africa has observer status, issued a guide on these systems in 2013.10 On the surface, the technology seems like a supposedly normal accounting system, used mainly by retailers. It has all the expected features: it records stock, sales, invoices, receipts and taxes. It can print daily, weekly and monthly accounting records. Yet the software has a feature that can blank out certain sales and receipts. You can set it to suppress, for instance, every fourth sale, or random sales of a particular value, whichever you prefer. The effect is that, on paper, your stock, sales and receipts would balance for tax purposes. All you would have to do is click on a secret place on the screen, or type a particular code on the keyboard, and the unrecorded sales and receipts would reflect. One would then be able to take this money out of the company’s takings for the day, week or month, and people would be none the wiser.

Then I got to the point: “I don’t think any other retail company in the world could do what I’m going to propose to you. It’s simple. It won’t cost us anything. And I believe it would just work magic, absolute magic on our customers, and our sales would escalate, and I think we’d just shoot past our Kmart friends in a year or two and probably Sears as well. I want you to take a pledge with me. I want you to promise that whenever you come within ten feet of a customer, you will look him in the eye, greet him, and ask him if you can help him. Now I know some of you are just naturally shy, and maybe don’t want to bother folks. But if you’ll go along with me on this, it would, I’m sure, help you become a leader. It would help your personality develop, you would become more outgoing, and in time you might become manager of that store, you might become a department manager, you might become a district manager, or whatever you choose to be in the company. It will do wonders for you. I guarantee it. Now, I want you to raise your right hand—and remember what we say at Wal-Mart, that a promise we make is a promise we keep—and I want you to repeat after me: From this day forward, I solemnly promise and declare that every time a customer comes within ten feet of me, I will smile, look him in the eye, and greet him. So help me Sam.

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Behind every sale there is a smile.

Retailing is the art of making habits and the business of maintaining habits.

Retailing is the art of making habits and the business of maintaining habits.

A month later I again asked for the information, but all I got was a vague email saying: “Regarding how countries and territories are covered, much depends on specific registration rules and reporting practices. A lot of countries publicly report annual retail sales, seizures and disarmament, or public registration figures. Others routinely see annual data reported in the press. We also get reports by asking. That kind of thing gives official annual inflation/deflation.”21 But he never gave me a list of sources for each country. There was no way to actually check the numbers.

Welcome to Crocker Sales - serving New England customers since 1919. Crocker Sales, with showrooms in Woburn, Massachusetts, and Merrimack, New Hampshire, is the leading retailer of some of the biggest names in home recreation and leisure. Master Spas, Artesian Spas, Swim Spas, Michael Phelps Swim Spas, Atlantic Pools, ProVia Doors and Windows and many more. We are proud to be one of the largest spa dealers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, serving all of New England.

The results were astounding: In 1908, the cheapest Model T sold for $825. By 19~3, the price was down to only $500. In 1916, it was reduced to $360. Finally, in 1926, the retail price hit a rock bottom $290. As the price came down, sales zoomed.

The food industry is a complex, global network of diverse businesses that supplies most of the food consumed by the world's population. The industry has evolved to become highly diversified, with manufacturing ranging from small, traditional, family-run activities to large, capital-intensive and highly mechanized industrial processes . Food production and sale involve various stages, including agriculture, manufacturing, food processing, marketing, wholesale and food distribution, foodservice, grocery, farmers' markets, public markets, and other retailing. Additionally, there are areas of research such as food grading, food preservation, food rheology, food storage that deal with the quality and maintenance of quality

Department stores in particular had difficulty surviving the onslaught of low-price competitors. Their inability to adapt to changing consumer tastes and the emergence of new retail channels that targeted specific market segments—the so-called category killers in hardware, toys, and furniture—deeply eroded their market share. While in the 1960s and 1970s most clothing was sold in full-service department stores, by 1990 such stores accounted for only 29 percent of sales.

bulk n. 1 [mass noun] the mass or size of something large: residents jump up and down on their rubbish to reduce its bulk. large size or shape: he moved quickly in spite of his bulk. [count noun] a large mass or shape. [as modifier] large in quantity: bulk orders of over 100 copies. roughage in food: potatoes supply energy, essential protein, and bulk. cargo in an unpackaged mass such as grain or oil. [PRINTING] the thickness of paper or a book. 2 (the bulk of) the greater part of something: the bulk of the traffic had passed. v. [with obj.] 1 treat (a product) so that its quantity appears greater than it is: traders were bulking up their flour with chalk. [no obj.] (bulk up) build up flesh and muscle, typically in training for sporting events. 2 combine (shares or commodities for sale): your shares will be bulked with others and sold at the best prices available. bulk large be or seem to be of great importance: territorial questions bulked large in diplomatic relations. in bulk 1 (of goods) in large quantities and generally at a reduced price: retail multiples buy in bulk. 2 (of a cargo or commodity) not packaged; loose. Middle English: the senses ‘cargo as a whole’ and ‘heap, large quantity’ (the earliest recorded) are probably from Old Norse búlki ‘cargo’; other senses arose perhaps by alteration of obsolete bouk ‘belly, body’. bulk buying

In many organizations, your ability to grow in your career will hit a ceiling unless you start managing people. All C-level executives lead teams. If your ambitions are to be a CEO or VP someday, you’re going to need to move on to the management track. There are also jobs where, beyond a certain skill level, the only path for growth is learning how to manage and coordinate the work of more and more people—for example, in customer support or retail sales

Product: •What is the product? •Who is it for? •What does it do? •How does it work? •How do people buy and use it? Benefits: •How does the product help people? •What are its most important benefits? Reader: •Who are you writing for? •How do they live? •What do they want? •What do they feel? •What do they know about the product, or this type of product? •Are they using a similar product already? Aim: •What do you want the reader to do, think or feel as a result of reading this copy? •What situation will they be in when they read it? Format: •Where will the copy be used? (Sales letter, web page, YouTube video, etc) •How long does it need to be? (500 words, 10 pages, 30 seconds, etc) •How should it be structured? (Main title, subtitles, sidebars, pullout quotes, calls to action, etc) •What other types of content might be involved? (Images, diagrams, video, music, etc) Tone: •Should the copy be serious, light-hearted, emotional, energetic, laid-back, etc? Constraints: •Maximum or minimum length •Anything that must be included or left out •Legal issues (regulations on scientific or health claims, prohibited words, trademarks, etc) •How this copy needs to fit in with other copy that’s already been written, or that will be written in the future •Whether the copy will form part of a campaign, so that different ideas along the same lines will be needed in future (see ‘Take it further’ in chapter 9) •Which countries the copy will appear in (whether in English, or translated) •SEO issues (for example, popular search terms that should feature in headings) •Brand or tone of voice guidelines (see ‘Tone of voice guidelines’ in chapter 15) Other background information about: •The product (development history, use cases, technical specifications, distribution, retail, buying processes, buying channels, marketing strategy) •The product’s market position (price point, offers and discounts, customer perceptions, competitors) •The target market (size, history, typical customer profile, marketing personas) •The client (history, current setup, culture, people, values) •The brand (history, positioning, values) Project management points: •Timescales (dates for copy plan, drafts, feedback, final copy, approval) •Who will provide feedback, and how •Who will approve the final copy, and how •How the copy will be delivered (usually a Word document, but not always) These are only suggestions.

After five years, I did the math around what I made from the sale of my first book, More than Cashflow: The Real Risks and Rewards of Profitable Real Estate Investing. At the time, I earned $68,000 from the sale of books through Amazon, Kindle, bookstores, and libraries (not including the more than 1,000 books sold in bulk deals). On retail sales alone, if I had a traditional publishing deal, I would have made $8,892—more than 80 percent less.

When you ask people at a party about what they do – keep your ears strained for how many of them project themselves as unique . Most of them might say I work for ABC company that ‘s into software or XYZ company that is into retail without implying what is perceptually unique about their companies

Visulon Inc.'s merchandising planning software offers a comprehensive suite of features, enabling retailers to effectively manage their inventory, allocate shelf space, and monitor sales performance. By leveraging powerful analytics and intuitive design tools, retailers can make data-driven decisions and customize their displays to drive sales and enhance the overall shopping experience.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the climate changed. One after another, department stores merged into one another, as did pharmacies, toy stores, and hardware stores. As each of these conglomerates grew in size, they also grew in clout. Vendors and manufacturers could no longer afford to make demands, because losing even one conglomerate meant losing big. Even iconic designers like Ralph Lauren began cutting deals with retailers, promising to pick up the slack if and when sales went south. From

My mother holds these markers all over town; people who owe her a favour. It might be a peek into planning documents, or preferential treatment at an up-coming retail sale, or even a private viewing of a property before it hits the market.

The Producer Price Index measures the average change -over time – in prices domestic producers receive for their output. Whereas “retail” constitutes prices reflected through the sale of goods and services to the public for their own consumption – not for resale – the Producer Price Index measures the cost of goods and services at the wholesale level. Each month, the Producer Price Index is published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Typically, the Producer Price Index is released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics the second week of the month.

In the United States, the story of DST is rather ridiculous, influenced by that especially American blend of wartime morality and blatant commercial interest. In the surprisingly hilarious book Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, Michael Downing writes that soon after the United States adopted DST in March 1918, “the lofty humanitarian goals of Daylight Saving—to get working girls safely home before dark, to reunite dads and moms with the kids before shadows fell on the backyard garden, to safeguard the physical and mental health of industrial workers by increasing their daily opportunity for sports and recreation—also resembled an innovative strategy for boosting retail sales.

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The electronics effort faced even greater challenges. To launch that category, David Risher tapped a Dartmouth alum named Chris Payne who had previously worked on Amazon’s DVD store. Like Miller, Payne had to plead with suppliers—in this case, Asian consumer-electronics companies like Sony, Toshiba, and Samsung. He quickly hit a wall. The Japanese electronics giants viewed Internet sellers like Amazon as sketchy discounters. They also had big-box stores like Best Buy and Circuit City whispering in their ears and asking them to take a pass on Amazon. There were middlemen distributors, like Ingram Electronics, but they offered a limited selection. Bezos deployed Doerr to talk to Howard Stringer at Sony America, but he got nowhere. So Payne had to turn to the secondary distributors—jobbers that exist in an unsanctioned, though not illegal, gray market. Randy Miller, a retail finance director who came to Amazon from Eddie Bauer, equates it to buying from the trunk of someone’s car in a dark alley. “It was not a sustainable inventory model, but if you are desperate to have particular products on your site or in your store, you do what you need to do,” he says. Buying through these murky middlemen got Payne and his fledgling electronics team part of the way toward stocking Amazon’s virtual shelves. But Bezos was unimpressed with the selection and grumpily compared it to shopping in a Russian supermarket during the years of Communist rule. It would take Amazon years to generate enough sales to sway the big Asian brands. For now, the electronics store was sparely furnished. Bezos had asked to see $100 million in electronics sales for the 1999 holiday season; Payne and his crew got about two-thirds of the way there. Amazon officially announced the new toy and electronics stores that summer, and in September, the company held a press event at the Sheraton in midtown Manhattan to promote the new categories. Someone had the idea that the tables in the conference room at the Sheraton should have piles of merchandise representing all the new categories, to reinforce the idea of broad selection. Bezos loved it, but when he walked into the room the night before the event, he threw a tantrum: he didn’t think the piles were large enough. “Do you want to hand this business to our competitors?” he barked into his cell phone at his underlings. “This is pathetic!” Harrison Miller, Chris Payne, and their colleagues fanned out that night across Manhattan to various stores, splurging on random products and stuffing them in the trunks of taxicabs. Miller spent a thousand dollars alone at a Toys “R” Us in Herald Square. Payne maxed out his personal credit card and had to call his wife in Seattle to tell her not to use the card for a few days. The piles of products were eventually large enough to satisfy Bezos, but the episode was an early warning. To satisfy customers and their own demanding boss during the upcoming holiday, Amazon executives were going to have to substitute artifice and improvisation for truly comprehensive selection.

For an example of how perception of a limited supply can increase sales, look no further than Amazon.com. My recent search for a DVD revealed there were “only 14 left in stock” (figure 18), while a search for a book I’ve had my eye on says only three copies remain. Is the world’s largest online retailer almost sold out of nearly everything I want to buy or are they using the scarcity heuristic to influence my buying behavior?

a 2003 study, which demonstrated that consumers’ preference for an online retailer increases when they are offered competitive price information.[xxxvi] The technique has also been used by Progressive, the car insurance company, to drive over $15 billion of annual insurance sales, up from just $3.4 billion before the tactic was implemented.

Have you ever seen someone buy a piece of furniture or clothing from New York, Chicago or London? Even though the exact same product was available right down the street at a local retailer for a fraction of the cost? This kind of phenomenon is referred to as ‘The expert from afar’ enticement that enraptures the naïve with the idea that things distant and far removed have more value because of the popularity of their location or the pedigree of the presenter. They often neglect to seek resources locally that offer the same product or practical wisdom, and do not employ the benefits of direct first hand observation to test the efficacy of what can be found close by within arm’s length. Instead they venture afar without looking at what is often right in front of them, invisible because of proximity. However, invisibility has its own value too. It allows one to carry on unnoticed, and go merrily about your own successful way.

Tips for Purchasing Industrial Surplus Parts Industrial surplus equipment and parts are becoming increasingly popular as more companies turn to purchasing the components either for use or for refurbishment and resale. Industrial surplus parts are sold when an industrial manufacturer decides to get rid of these extra (or surplus) pieces, whether they are equipment or parts for putting together equipment, which can then be purchased by resellers or Industrial surplus buyers. For example: The most common type of parts sold for industrial surplus are electrical or electronics—because technology is increasing at a rapid past, it is not uncommon for the parts for electrical equipment to become obsolete when the latest model or latest technology is used. After the new model replaces the old, the parts and equipment are considered surplus. And also When we can buy surplus inventory from retailers or businesses is a great way to invest relatively little money and resell those inventory items for a significant profit. The following are some practical tips to keep in mind when purchasing industrial surplus parts. Tip: Research the surplus parts before purchasing Not all surplus parts are created equal, which is why you should never just purchase a surplus part because it seems like a good deal or because you have come across a new sale. It’s important to research the type of part, the manufacturer, whether it is used/non-used, and other relevant information. You want to be able to get more than what you paid for these surplus parts, if you are reselling, or to use the parts, if you are purchasing them for your own business; “jumping right in” could result in a waste of time, money and purchases. Tip: Never purchase certain parts without a warranty period Most surplus parts should have some kind of warranty or warranty period. This is especially true for electrical or electronic parts, which are more sensitive in nature. Do not purchase any electrical surplus parts if there is not a warranty period, as you will be risking your money. When possible, purchase other types of surplus parts only when there is an acceptable warranty period to help protect your purchase. Tip: Look for professional surplus retailers It might be tempting to look for an “underbelly” store that offers surplus parts at an extreme discount, but you should only do business with a professional retailer or manufacturer with a reputable reputation. When you choose little known surplus part resellers or sellers with poor reputations, you might be purchasing parts that are cobbled together or even stolen.

Scarcely a year after his Steve Jobs–like big-stage launch presentation, after JCPenney’s sales had shrunk by more than $5 billion and earnings had plunged by almost $1 billion, Johnson was gone.

Total retail sales rose 0.7 percent in November, as holiday shopping began, and that came despite a sharp tumble in gasoline prices that reduced the dollar value of sales at gas stations by 0.8 percent. Analysts had expected a rise of only 0.4 percent. Read narrowly, the results show that some survey data suggesting weak post-Thanksgiving Black Friday sales was misleading at best; retail trade groups said at the time that they believed consumers spread their spending more evenly through November than they have in the past, and that appears to hold up.

Consider the case of Walmart. It is the largest retailer in the world, with more than two million employees and annual sales of around $450 billion—a sum greater than the GDP of four-fifths of the world’s countries. Before the Web brought forth so much data, the company held perhaps the biggest set of data in corporate America. In the 1990s it revolutionized retailing by recording

The new GST: A halfway house In spite of all the favourable features of the GST, it introduces the anomaly of having an origin-based tax on interstate trade he proposed GST would be a single levy. 1141 words From a roadblock during the UPA regime, the incessant efforts of the BJP government have finally paved way for the introduction of the goods and services tax (GST). This would, no doubt, be a major reform in the existing indirect tax system of the country. With a view to introducing the GST, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has introduced the Constitution (122nd Amendment) Bill 2014 in Parliament. The new tax would be implemented from April 1, 2016. Both the government and the taxpayers will have enough time to understand the implications of the new tax and its administrative nuances. Unlike the 119th Amendment Bill, which lapsed with the dissolution of the previous Lok Sabha, the new Bill will hopefully see the light of the day as it takes into account the objections of the state governments regarding buoyancy of the tax and the autonomy of the states. It proposes setting up of the GST Council, which will be a joint forum of the Centre and the states. This council would function under the chairmanship of the Union finance minister with all the state finance ministers as its members. It will make recommendations to the Union and the states on the taxes, cesses and surcharges levied by the Union, the states and the local bodies, which may be subsumed in the GST; the rates including floor rates with bands of goods and services tax; any special rate or rates for a specified period to raise additional resources during any natural calamity or disaster etc. However, all the recommendations will have to be supported by not less than three-fourth of the weighted votes—the Centre having one-third votes and the states having two-third votes. Thus, no change can be implemented without the consent of both the Centre and the states. The proposed GST would be a single levy. It would aim at creating an integrated national market for goods and services by replacing the plethora of indirect taxes levied by the Centre and the states. While central taxes to be subsumed include central excise duty (CenVAT), additional excise duties, service tax, additional customs duty (CVD) and special additional duty of customs (SAD), the state taxes that fall in this category include VAT/sales tax, entertainment tax, octroi, entry tax, purchase tax and luxury tax. Therefore, all taxes on goods and services, except alcoholic liquor for human consumption, will be brought under the purview of the GST. Irrespective of whether we currently levy GST on these items or not, it is important to bring these items under the Constitution Amendment Bill because the exclusion of these items from the GST does not provide any flexibility to levy GST on these items in the future. Any change in the future would then require another Constitutional Amendment. From a futuristic approach, it is prudent not to confine the scope of the tax under the bindings of the Constitution. The Constitution should demarcate the broad areas of taxing powers as has been the case with sales tax and Union excise duty in the past. Currently, the rationale of exclusion of these commodities from the purview of the GST is solely based on revenue considerations. No other considerations of tax policy or tax administration have gone into excluding petroleum products from the purview of the GST. However, the long-term perspective of a rational tax policy for the GST shows that, at present, these taxes constitute more than half of the retail prices of motor fuel. In a scenario where motor fuel prices are deregulated, the taxation policy would have to be flexible and linked to the global crude oil prices to ensure that prices are held stable and less pressure exerted on the economy during the increasing price trends. The trend of taxation of motor fuel all over the world suggests that these items

Algorithmic profits Algorithmic marketing is allowing companies to do things they couldn’t do before, and some early signs show it can deliver big value, especially in financial or information services. In North America, Amazon.com grew 30 to 40 percent, quarter after quarter, throughout the United States’ 2008-2012 recession, while other major retailers shrank or went out of business. From 2006 to 2010, Amazon spent 5.6 percent of its sales revenue on IT, while rivals Target and Best Buy spent 1.3% and 0.5%, respectively. That investment and focus has yielded increasingly sophisticated recommendation engines that deliver over 35 percent of all sales, an automated e-mail/customer service systems (90 percent are automated, versus 44 percent for the average retailer) that are a key component of its best-in-class customer satisfaction, and dynamic pricing systems that crawl the Web and react to competitor pricing and stock levels by altering prices on Amazon.com, in some cases every 15 seconds.

Manufacturers’ allocation of funds between consumer investment and retailer investment continues to swing inexorably towards the retailers, who attract in excess of 20% of a typical FMCG manufacturer’s net sales value, compared to 5% spent on advertising. Cost-cutting

Top brands stayed on top because of the continual investment and commitment of the manufacturers during a time when mass media gave them an affordable and highly effective route to the consumers’ minds. They were able to defend their positions because they could afford more R & D, more advertising and a bigger sales force than any interlopers. Manufacturers became used to the idea of owning space in the consumer’s mind and believed it was theirs by right. But brand mindspace is not a permanently acquired asset that continually delivers profits. Rather, it represents a position that must be continually defended, especially today, where competition from retailers comes as a shock to most manufacturers.

Consumers can now scan the code on the product when they are running low, and it will be ordered and delivered within hours to their home, completely side-lining all the tools and techniques of competing manufacturers who would wish to get the consumer to brand switch. Tesco’s Homeplus in South Korea also launched a campaign that engages shoppers to buy products using QR codes. Homeplus created virtual billboards of their store aisles in subway stations, allowing passengers to shop while they waited by scanning the products’ QR codes – the groceries being delivered when they arrived home. The goal of the campaign was to help Homeplus compete with the number-one retailer, E-MART, without increasing their store numbers. Since the launch, their online sales have increased 130%, making them the top online retailer in South Korea, and a close second offline.

Thanks to the success of private label strategies (see Chapter 9), five of the top eight FMCG manufacturers in the world are actually retailers; giants such as Unilever and Coca-Cola are no longer even in the top ten, their global sales dwarfed by products under the names of Wal-Mart (now the world’s largest FMCG manufacturer), Carrefour, Tesco, Aldi and Lidl. The

Retailers have to generate increased sales in each location to justify the investment, and every manufacturer has to demonstrate how their brands help to achieve this versus competitive brands, either through increasing store traffic or increasing basket size, or both.

if management is under pressure to deliver profits in the short term, quick-response promotions are a more attractive investment than design improvements. Short-term actions are also favoured in industries sensitive to changes in volume sales, like retailers. Shoppers tend to react more quickly to price promotions than to store layout changes.

They could see the economic attractiveness of being able to strip out the burgeoning brand-related costs from manufacturer brands and make a very good margin, even if the volumes were going to be low. There is a lot of profit available if you do not spend 5–10% of retail selling price (RSP) on marketing, 2% on product development, 10% on high management costs and 8% on a sales force.

The sales potential of generics was always going to be limited by their poor quality – imagined or real – when compared to major brands. Since the bottom of the market is limited in size (most people seek average or premium quality), generics can take only a limited share. Retailers realised there was a greater opportunity to compete directly with national brands for some of their volume, and, by not incurring the brands’ advertising and sales force costs, be more profitable. Hence copycat brands, close copies of manufacturer brands, were a natural progression and have become entrenched in the market.

Within the category, what is the optimal combination of brands and formats to cover the maximum buying intentions, and what is the optimal price structure for discriminating without losing sales? Retailers

A well-planned category will satisfy the largest proportion of shoppers, actualise every potential sale and prompt unplanned purchases. Profits will be affected by the mix of sales: the range should price-discriminate, satisfying price-sensitive customers while earning higher margins from quality-sensitive shoppers. For many retailers, category planning also involves promoting their private label brands.

Category captains are recognised by retailers as having the greatest knowledge of consumer behaviour and mechanics in a category, and usually will have the most comprehensive range. Retailers believe that stocking this manufacturer’s range, backed with their understanding of positioning, merchandising, shelf allocation etc., should optimise sales. This

Owing to the ever-increasing pressure on space, as retailers continue to extend private label ranges, there is a risk of branded products being moved to less-optimal locations, having fewer promotional slots and facings or being delisted. Manufacturers cannot wait for this to happen before reacting; they must be proactive in making the case for their brands. While the absolute cash and margins on private labels may be higher for the retailer, the manufacturer has to shift the focus to total system profitability. Many factors favour manufacturer brands when total profitability is considered, including: Sales velocity: Shelfspace turnover is often higher for manufacturer brands. The velocity of leading manufacturer brands is often 10% higher. Profit per linear inch of shelfspace. Discounts and off-invoice allowances: Includes slotting allowances, listing fees, promotional deals, advertising and merchandising allowances, and credit for return of unsold merchandise. Promotional and advertising fees. Provision of ‘free’ logistics services: Includes transportation, warehouse and store labour, and merchandising help for the retailer. Manufacturer brands usually retail at higher-than-average prices: Even when the net margin on manufacturer brands is lower, the absolute cash profit per unit may be higher.

Manufacturers have one advantage that can never be overcome if used with focus, vigour and investment, and that is innovation. Yogurt, seemingly an ideal category for private label to take the lion’s share, has seen private label share decline. The top-five leaders, Danone, Yoplait/Sodiaal, Yakult Honsha, Nestlé and Müller, represent half of all yogurt sales. Their innovation has been developing premium products, like pro-biotic yogurt and yogurt enhanced with fruit, and they launch continually; between 2006 and 2010 Danone introduced nine new products. Although retailers have developed brands, Aldi has Fit & Active non-fat yogurt and Kroger has Carb Master Yogurt, they haven’t won over consumers, owing to their lack of innovation. Both are seeing sales decline.

The organizational and technology challenges are significant, and we have touched on only a few of them here. But we’ve seen big pay-offs for retailers who can follow individual customers across media and channels. Increasingly,

The crucial and only difference is that pyramids amass their funds from enrollment fees while the MLM, to be legal, must engage in retail sales of some type of product or service.

Once things really picked up, a virtuous halo effect took hold: Heavy promotions of iPods brought people into retail stores, where customers were exposed to Macs. iPod advertising indirectly drove the sales of computers—even if Apple wasn’t currently pumping huge ad dollars into the category.

One measure we are using is how many seconds it takes for each store to generate a dollar of sales. They run anywhere from 30 seconds to 120 per dollar. What do you think about this measure? Heckman: It would be a very useful measure if you could effect change and remeasure it to see if you are making headway.

There is a lot of research that shows reviews have a significant impact on sales. If you have more positive reviews, or even just a higher volume, you get more sales.

As aisles become more crowded (higher aisleness), the time it takes for shoppers to spend a dollar increases. As we have noted, the faster customers spend money, the higher the overall store sales. Aisleness is a significant factor to consider in thinking about store navigation.

To the extent that retailers can achieve this goal, they will be rewarded in higher sales and profits.

Exhaustive analysis of the findings indicated principles to improve in-store visibility. Based on these, Guinness created a prototype fixture and installed it in test stores, as shown in Figure 2.1. The extruding fins were highly visible, ensuring that the offer would reach shoppers at the end of the aisle. The fins also broke the linear nature of the aisle, helping to stop shoppers by the display. Product layout was clear and authoritative. All these elements were within the cone of vision. Strong brand block and the use of signpost products reduced visual “noise,” strengthened impact, and acted as guides around the fixture. Figure 2.1 This Guinness display, using fins to break the aisle, helped stop shoppers and increase sales dramatically. Guinness monitored checkout scanner data in the test stores. It then modified the design in response to these findings and installed the display in various retail sites. Guinness then installed the new display in ten sites and identified another ten control sites for a formal test. The new fixture increased sales dramatically. Why? The new display was able to pull customers through the three moments of truth: reaching, stopping, and closing the sale. The fixture made stout easier to find in this busy category, so the display reached out to shoppers. The time until the first customer interaction decreased from an average of 38 seconds to 11 seconds. The majority of stout purchasers went straight to the fixture, so it did a better job stopping them in front of the display. The total average visit time reduced from 2.08 minutes to 1.53 minutes, indicating that it is easier to shop from the new fixture. U-turning in the middle of the aisle halved, to only 24 percent. More customers were now shopping the whole aisle. And, finally, these customers bought Guinness in much higher numbers. In the test stores, Guinness draught sales increased by 25 percent in value and 24 percent in volume. Total stout sales grew by 10 percent and total beer sales by 4 percent

End-aisle-displays, other free-standing product displays, and the in-store flyers (weekly circulars) receive the most exposure in the store. It is not surprising that 30 percent of all store sales come off end-aisle displays. On the other hand, we have found that even very limited exposures can be highly effective in producing sales.

Retailers are driving sales to new heights by moderating choice angst, offering a more limited selection of items. But there is a related angst issue in most stores: “Where is the …?” We refer to this as navigational angst. And there is no question that navigation can create significant frustration, whether it is navigating the shelf visually or finding one’s way around the store. There are at least five ways to reduce navigational angst, as follows: • Design the store and lay out the merchandise in a logical and intuitive way. • Provide signage or other navigational aids to assist the shopper. • Reduce the size of the store to reduce the need for navigation. • Remove visual barriers so shoppers can see the whole store.

But any alternate display, even on an aisle not frequently visited, has more potential to increase incremental sales than another, expanded main aisle gondola location.

In addition, discussing these things and making decisions at the outset of the collaboration can help to define non-writing roles. For example, who will publish the book? How will expenses be covered? How and when will royalties be dispersed? How often will sales reporting be done? At the time of this writing, it is not possible to use any major retailer’s platform for a royalty-split project. In other words, one person will have to handle the publication and then be accountable to the other.

Across many studies, I have found a basic principle: The faster you close sales—the less time wasted for the shopper—the more sales you will make.

This manifesto is a distillation of critical action points that will lead to double-digit sales and profit increases, and which have actually led some retailers to achieve as much as five times more sales over the past many years. The adage, “The good is the enemy of the great,” is possibly nowhere more applicable than in retailing. With a global population nearing seven billion, the world demand for goods and services is swelling. The movement from developing societies (traditional retailing) to highly developed societies (modern retailing) continues apace. Demand alone has been the driving force behind good retailing, globally.

1. Focus on the short trip. For supermarkets around the world (the same principle applies to all classes of trade), half of all shopping trips result in the purchase of five or fewer items, with one being the most common. These short trips typically account for one-third of store sales. The new strategy is to increase the size of each of those baskets by one or two items. Quick trippers spend money very fast, and getting them to buy one or two more items is far easier than motivating stock-up shoppers to buy ten or twenty more items. This focus, focus, focus on the quick trip could deliver an easy 30 percent sales lift (and a lot more when the synergies with other types of trips become apparent).

The most important promotion is place, not price. In a typical store, probably 2 percent of the total items in the store at any one time are being promoted on end-of-aisle displays or other secondary promotional displays. This 2 percent of items may constitute a full 30 percent of all the sales in the store. However, half the shoppers purchasing an item from one of these promotional displays are unaware that it is at a reduced price. Of the half who are aware, half of those really didn’t care about the price. Good retailers are locked in a mindset that price considerations dominate shopping.

9. Reach you can buy, but stopping power and closing power are inherent to the product, primarily through the package. Both stopping power and closing power can be measured for individual products, as well as categories. The significance is that some products are good at attracting attention, but poor at closing the sale, whereas others are good at closing, but can’t seem to stop the traffic. Besides remedial package design, appropriate shelf management and promotional strategies can increase the stopping and closing power of existing products.

Unlike traditional retailers, Amazon boasted what was called a negative operating cycle. Customers paid with their credit cards when their books shipped but Amazon settled its accounts with the book distributors only every few months. With every sale, Amazon put more cash in the bank, giving it a steady stream of capital to fund its operations and expansion.14 The company could also lay claim to a uniquely high return on invested capital. Unlike

In California and Florida, the following lines of business tend to be recruiting for the College Program: ·          Operations ·          Entertainment ·          Lodging ·          Food & Beverage ·          Retail / Sales ·          Recreation

Howard Schultz, the man who built Starbucks into a colossus, isn’t so different from Travis in some ways.5.22 He grew up in a public housing project in Brooklyn, sharing a two-bedroom apartment with his parents and two siblings. When he was seven years old, Schultz’s father broke his ankle and lost his job driving a diaper truck. That was all it took to throw the family into crisis. His father, after his ankle healed, began cycling through a series of lower-paying jobs. “My dad never found his way,” Schultz told me. “I saw his self-esteem get battered. I felt like there was so much more he could have accomplished.” Schultz’s school was a wild, overcrowded place with asphalt playgrounds and kids playing football, basketball, softball, punch ball, slap ball, and any other game they could devise. If your team lost, it could take an hour to get another turn. So Schultz made sure his team always won, no matter the cost. He would come home with bloody scrapes on his elbows and knees, which his mother would gently rinse with a wet cloth. “You don’t quit,” she told him. His competitiveness earned him a college football scholarship (he broke his jaw and never played a game), a communications degree, and eventually a job as a Xerox salesman in New York City. He’d wake up every morning, go to a new midtown office building, take the elevator to the top floor, and go door-to-door, politely inquiring if anyone was interested in toner or copy machines. Then he’d ride the elevator down one floor and start all over again. By the early 1980s, Schultz was working for a plastics manufacturer when he noticed that a little-known retailer in Seattle was ordering an inordinate number of coffee drip cones. Schultz flew out and fell in love with the company. Two years later, when he heard that Starbucks, then just six stores, was for sale, he asked everyone he knew for money and bought it. That was 1987. Within three years, there were eighty-four stores; within six years, more than a thousand. Today, there are seventeen thousand stores in more than fifty countries.

Listen. Don't sexually harass Brenda and also, the guy who wants 15 percent off that kitchen mixer he found in the sale bin can go fuck himself because it was never in the sale bin and he knows it.

Large retailers need to develop models for getting close to people like Sharad Kaka. Spic and span stores, glitzy surroundings, English speaking personnel and above all, the security and the uniformed staff, obviously don’t seem to do it. The unfamiliarity of this format, its association with authoritarianism and policing, turns away many people who would actually stand to benefit from the many sales on offer at any point in a modern store, sales that can be far richer in quality compared to the normal kirana store.

While he was in school, we needed to pay our bills. I had to get a job. I'd majored in music (piano). I had no business credentials, connections, or confidence, so I started as a secretary to a retail sales broker at Smith Barney in midtown Manhattan. It was the era of Liar's Poker, Bonfire of the Vanities, and Working Girl. Working on Wall Street was exciting. I started taking business courses at night and I had a boss who believed in me, which allowed me to bridge from secretary to investment banker. This rarely happens. Later I became an equity research analyst and subsequently cofounded the investment firm Rose Park Advisors with Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School. When I walked onto Wall Street through the secretarial side door, and then walked off Wall Street to become an entrepreneur, I was a disruptor. "Disruptive innovation" is a term coined by Christensen to describe an innovation at the low end of the market that eventually upends an industry. In my case, I had started at the bottom and climbed to the top—now I wanted to upend my own career. No wonder my friend thought I'd lost my sanity. According to Christensen's theory, disruptors secure their initial foothold at the low end of the market, offering inferior, low-margin products. At first, the disrupter's position is weak. For example, when Toyota entered the U.S. market in the 1950s, it introduced the Corona, a small, cheap, no-frills car that appealed to first-time car buyers on a tight budget.

retailers use a master brand model, supporting one brand, the chain, whereas manufacturers primarily use a product brand model supporting a wide portfolio of individual product brands. This gives the retailers an enormous economy of scale advantage because they only have to build and reinforce one brand image that covers billions in sales.

Retail brands are just as vulnerable as product brands to a loss of trust based on, for example, a major product quality failure, but the stakes and risks are much higher. A brand such as Tesco Basics has annual sales of £1 billion, so the value that can be lost is huge. Equally, the brand is composed of hundreds of products manufactured by third parties, so the risks of a product quality failure are magnified. Retailers

One retailer told us that, as a rule of thumb, sales of a brand will be reduced by two-thirds if it is moved from an eye-level to a foot-level position. Presence

A retailer facing competition from hard discounters or Wal-Mart cannot afford to lose their price-sensitive shoppers, because, as we saw in Chapter 2, retailers are sensitive to small changes in sales, and price-sensitive shoppers are a significant segment of shoppers. Dropping

In simple terms, the trade start buying the product on discount to hold in stock for future sale at a higher margin rather than sell immediately. They make money by taking advantage of contradicting discounts and promotional schedules and then selling the product for a higher price at a later date. This is not uncommon. If a manufacturer offers promotional prices every other month, a retailer will forward buy five weeks’ supply at the end of each promotional month. It is not unknown for a retailer to buy a year’s supply ahead of a major price rise. At

Originally developed as a cost-saving efficiency tool, once all product categories adopted UPCs and computing became powerful and cheap enough to handle the unimaginable quantity of data, the benefits of retail information dwarfed the anticipated cost benefits from efficiencies. Real-time knowledge of sales at the item level dramatically illustrated the truism of knowledge equating to power, especially when the data could be measured at the individual shopper level through loyalty cards.