Retail Merchandising: What's New?

By: James Hallman

The merchandising philosophy upon which a successful store’s strategy is built is a simple one. It all evolves around two words – and those two words are “What’s new”.

In order for a retailer to have a lot of “What’s New” at the right time, in the right store, and also to be able to pay for “What’s New”, you must have the ability to accurately predict sales in each classification, or category, of merchandise in each store. Then, you must be able to determine the proper amount of inventory to have on hand each month to achieve those sales – profitably.
Having too little of a particular group of merchandise on hand results in lost sales. Having too much leads to excessive and/or unbalanced stock, lousy cash flow, nasty markdowns, and sooner or later, lost profit.

Here’s a “quick and dirty” way to judge for yourself, by yourself, how effective your merchandising strategy has been: When customers come in, which question do you hear most often, “What’s new?”, or “What’s on sale?”? 

Customers who ask “What’s new?” are primarily interested in your newest and latest products, your service, your image. They see you as a “first with the best” leader in your industry, in your community. Customers who ask “What’s on sale?” are primarily interested in price – the price you may now have on something for which you originally asked more. They see you as a “loss leader”.

If you are hearing more of “What’s on sale?” than you are “What’s new?”, it may be that your past merchandising practices have trained them to find more of “what’s on sale” in your store than “what’s new”.

"Winning @ Retail" is a full service process which has helped hundreds of client retailers create more "What's new?" customers by having more "what's new" merchandise, without over-buying. To find out more about this powerful service, just request more information by submitting the contact form on our Contact Us page.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: James Hallman has over 40 years in retail management, both corporate and entrepreneurial. For the last 18+ years, he has operated The Hallman Company, a retail consultant agency based in Atlanta, Georgia. The Hallman Company specializes in bringing best-of-class services to best-of-class specialty retailers. Services include inventory planning with pre-calculated open to buy, and team management training.

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