How do you handle slow moving stock and stagnant ventures?
I often ask my apparel in my store why won’t you sell?
Receiving a steady stream of window shoppers is not all that bad luck, they pass information to others about what they have seen, they tell their companions, “hey wait I saw a very pretty dress on store 49 down sixth street,” “how beautiful was it?” asked the other members, “it looks like those fellows do sell nice clothes these days, maybe I shall go to check it out for myself,” the other says, what began as a short observation turned into a shopping spree, slowly word about the shop spreads and the keeper soon finds themselves with a flood of customers.
As far as I can remember, customers should not feel they are the only ones coming to make an order at your shop, they enjoy the fulfilling thoughts of being just faces in the crowd of window shoppers. They just want to contribute. They want to buy only stuff that everybody else is buying from the most popular store. Absence of many customers in a given store scares away the few willing customers.
Dealing with slow moving stock is quiet painful discouraging and heart-breaking, I once bought a space in a small plaza, in it I placed the best leather boots from the best known brands, I really hoped that these were going to sell off quickly in the first few weeks, I did succeed in selling a dozen in the first month for the mall was particularly new at the time, but in the subsequent months, there are days and weeks that passed without making a single sale, while there were bills to pay, you know, months of no sales grew into years, such frustration was becoming unbearable, there are times when I saw what seemed to be potential customers came gazing through the windows but when we go over to welcome them in so that they can take a better look, they quickly run away, it’s better to have no customers at all than to have window shoppers who waste your time and attention day in day out, I often ask this my jackets and leather boots, “why won’t you sell yourself? I have made the most attractive displays in the entire mall, yet none of them would notice, those who notice as they pass by are not willing to buy, when I put up something for sale, I expect it to makes sales, it should sell like hot cakes, not just sit there for ages as if some piece of artwork, when I build an apartment, I expect people to move in as soon as it is finished, why are all my apartments nearly half empty? They are consumers behaving badly, they are taught well of consumer behavior yet they won’t respond.
Merchants of the Wait.
“What does it mean to be a merchant? Is it an easy life or is it as hard as farming?”
What is the use of keeping around clothing that do not sell, why don’t you remove all the so called slow moving stock then, and remain with only those that sell, are these people really serious with their work? If they were, why not take action now?
The answer to that is no, these clothing are just there to help others sell, if our customers were to find lots of empty shelves on our clothing outlet it would probably scare them off. Bad stock helps good stock sell.
At first when I built the chain store, I thought I could just stack up stock then hire an attractive face to do for me the sales, then customers would flock into my storefront each day, this later turned out to be a nightmare, my store looked deserted like a ghost city, no one ever came near or across it, most customers kept far off. For every product sold there are thousands of similar products left behind crying to potential customers to pick them. They are tired of staying on the shelves.
We created an excellent product that would send buyers scrambling for the stock on display, that’s what connects us, nothing else or more than that, so we didn’t have to entertain every customer that walked into our store, to beg them to buy our goods.
Entrepreneurship is surely meddled with lots of frustrations, you stay stone faced all day and sometimes go home in the evening with nothing.
Others advised me saying, “please moderate your price tags so that you can convert your willing but unable to buy visitors into regular customers.” I surely tried out their counsel but this too didn’t seem to work.
Fresh Stalls.
After spending a few months working at a local restaurant that served fish foods, Jeremy and I decided to reduce the serving area space. We discovered that the too many empty seats in the serving area scared away our first customers. They each diverted their payment to adjacent stalls, but three months later after reducing the tables from twenty one to four, we had people swarming in from every direction and our servings increased threefold, we added two more tables to those that already existed. when the four tables under the main roof were full, we set in place temporary sheds as more people came in to take shelter from the afternoon heat, we ordered our fish suppliers to bring in more tunas, and perch, our temporary seats & sheds were kept in place ready to be used only when necessary, we just made sure there were no idle furniture around and we succeeded in that to an extent.
We successfully saved our restaurant from falling into a pit, a potentially grave situation was threatening to destroy the business.
Soon we are going to do commodity moderation, in the course of time we shall smoke out every unproductive product especially slow moving stock, leaving only potentially selling goods plus a few others in the store to just keep our stores filled to capacity.
