Managing Inventory - Tips For The Successful Boutique Owner
Ashley Alderson explains why boutique owners should clear old inventory constantly instead of waiting for a big sale. Unsold items signal problems with fit, color, or customer fit, so use POS data to find patterns and remarket to the right people. Rotate small amounts into a sale area weekly, involve staff in re-merchandising, and call vendors about swaps rather than eating losses.
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Hello, Hello. Hello, everybody. All right, wait for a few you guys to jump on here. How's it going? Hello. Hey, Shayna, how's it going? Good morning. Good morning. Yeah, you guys let me know when you're on here. Hey, Desi, how's it going? Vicki, good to see you. Dizzy. I need to get down and see you. Yes. How are things down in Dubuque, Iowa? Hi, Shannon. Shannon, I had a blast watching you at Summit. Thank you for all your. All your entertainment was awesome. Good morning, girls. All right, big topic today. Moving out old inventory. Right. Good morning. Yes. Florida sounds beautiful. Wisconsin is actually really nice today. I was doing horse chores this morning. I thought, holy smokes, it's actually a beautiful day. It's almost July, but yeah, we've had some really crappy weather up here. I know universally around the country, summer has been a kind of a miss, so. Well, I guess it's not technically summer yet, but let's face it, after a long winter, everybody's ready for summer and spring. So that being said, you guys are all coming here today, I bet, with the concern about old inventory. So I will jump right into it. Think the thing about old inventory is we can kind of get complacent and we can kind of get lazy. Give me a heads up or not. Heads up, thumbs up. If you guys will admit to getting lazy with your inventory. We're quick to. We're quick to buy new. We're quick to think, well, our customers aren't buying that, so I best order something else because they just simply don't like that. And then that ties up our cash and then we get, we get in trouble financially, space wise. We run out of hangers, we run out of momentum, we run out of energy, all these kind of things, right? So I guess we kind of got to go back to. Here's the deal. When I do coaching and things like that, whether it's sports related or business related or whatever, I always tell people, okay, so we have a problem. But what got us to this problem is the real problem. So what happened a few steps earlier is the real problem that's resulted in the situation we're in, right? Basketball, the ball not going through the hoop on a free throw is. That's not the problem. The problem is your delivery. Your problem is your footwork. The problem is your formation. The problem is your, you know, where your elbow is, those kind of things. That's how we fix the problem. So the fact that we all have old inventory, we all have onesies left over or we all have random, you know, like a specific size or something left over. That is the problem. However, let's go back and look a few steps leading up to that to figure out why that's the problem. Why do we find ourselves in this situation? So here's a few tips today. This isn't rocket science. It's just. There's just some things we really need to kind of go back to the drawing board and think. First of all, let me preface by saying, in business, I always say, and I tell this to so many people, that you're either winning or you're learning. So when you make a sale, you're winning. Life is great. When you don't make a sale, when the inventory sits there, you should be learning, learning. Why is it still sitting there? Why is that customer taking it into the dressing room but never trying, never buying it? Or why is that stuff still just sitting here? And people don't even take that move to put it into the. Into the dressing room to try it on, or to put it into their shopping cart, or actually buy it and then come back and return it. So those are a couple things. You know, look at those reasons or come up with the reasons. Ask your staff, figure that out. What is the problem there? What's the hurdle? Why are we not converting that into a sale? That is a forever sale, right? So ask yourself why and be aggressive with these things. Remember, your inventory does not ever get better with age. We talk about these things all the time in retail bootcamp. And the deal is your inventory is your biggest investment. That's where you're tying up so much of your cash. But it's not wine. It's not going to get any better with age. It is going to grow. I always talk about your inventory growing in your store. And what I mean by that is your sweaters that started out as crop that ends up as tunics. It's not the way they were designed. But over time, your inventory is going to age, it's going to grow, it's going to discolor, it's going to do all these kind of things. It just doesn't get better. So being aggressive about that is really important. Don't make assumptions about your products. Don't just assume that for reasons why they're not selling. Again, ask your staff, ask them, why is this not moving? What is happening? Is the fit bad? Is the color bad? Is the delivery time bad? All these kind of things. Ask why. Ask why numerous times. If they say, well, customers don't like it. Why don't they like it. You know, if they say it's wrong color, well, why? What is the color that everybody's asking for? Is it the wrong fit? Is it a full length pant versus a crop? Or do you have crops and people are wanting long? All those kind of things help you learn, right? So if you're not winning, you're learning. So the thing is, remember when you bought it, you bought it with an intention to sell it. That intention should still be true today. Even though you might be bored of it, you might be over it, you might be sick of it, whatever, but you still bought it. It's still something that you invested it. So you need to turn it into cash. You need to turn it into cash fast. So don't be lazy with this. Figure out. Figure out who the customer is that's going to want it. Because when you saw it in the showroom or you saw it online, you immediately thought of a customer, specific type of customer that was going to buy it, right? Okay, so has that changed? Ask yourself, has that customer changed? Did I think Brandi was going to buy it? But now Brandi is clearly not bought it for some reason. So do you think customer over here is going to buy it? And for all your retail bootcamp girls, those that have went through it and those that will be, you know, it's open now. Those that will be signing up now, you will learn my. I have three different versions of customers. So maybe type A is who you thought was going to buy it. You were wrong. You learned from that and now is. Now go back. Is it type B or C? Is it that sales type customer that only wants the bottom end of everything that you have the lowest price? Is it her? If it is market to them, that is my step two. I'm trying to go through my notes and I don't want to miss anything, but, you know, be really aggressive with that. If you lost on type A customer, now regroup. Is it type B or type C that we're going to. Because if it is, your marketing strategy is completely different. We learned all about that in retail bootcamp. But I don't want you to overthink these things. You know, y' all go grocery shopping. I have a pantry over here that is full of. Of stuff. Where's the good stuff at the front? Where's the stuff? I don't. I'm kind of over. It's at the back, right? Like, I went through the aisle with an intent to make some amazing dish. I get the stuff, I get home. I get Lazy. But however, that say it's just five bucks of groceries, it got put in my pantry and now it's behind the peanut butter and the syrup and all these kind of things that I use every day. It's kind of there, but I forget about it because I don't look at it, I don't see it right, however, that my money is still there, eventually I will throw that away because I will get lazy and I won't use it. I won't introduce it to anybody. I won't come up. I won't even say, hey, should we use this today? Or what do you think about this? To my kids and my family, what do you think about us making this? I'll just get lazy. And eventually what will we do? We'll donate it. I'm not going to donate that. But I mean, basically we throw it away. So. So the same thing happens in our store. Eventually we get so, like, ah, let's just get something new. Let's just do something else and tie up our cash and push all that old inventory into one spot that eventually we get overwhelmed and we do some big purge thing. And I see all, I see all these posts like, I have so much old inventory, I need to purge. I have so much old inventory. I don't have any hangers, I don't have any space, and I need to make cash and I need to do all these things right, because we've let it get away from us because we've gotten lazy. I am not shaming anybody, you guys. I've been there. I've done this the same. I mean, my God, my closet is the same way. Like, every once in a while I reached this point where I might have went into my closet to just do something and I reached this, like, point where my head's gonna explode and I have to just declutter everything, throw everything into a bag and drop it off at Goodwill. And I'm over it. I'm over it. Until all of a sudden I realize, golly, I just lost a bunch of money. Or maybe I did want that, or, you know, I put a little bit more thought and effort into it and I realized the mistakes I made. So I guess my thought on this is you did intent. You bought it with the intent to sell it. And everything that you bring in, all your lines should be profitable. Why aren't they? Have you gotten lazy? Have you just gotten aggressive or excited about buying new things and not given the right amount of time to educate your customers, educate yourself, staff, and truly sell them who's with me? You guys all hear me? I mean, is this a true struggle? I pretty sure I'm not the only one. Okay, so going back to my notes because I tend to just get off on a rampage. But we're gonna ask who that customer is that's going to buy it and who didn't buy it and why didn't they buy it. We're going to figure these things out. The other thing that we really need to do is we need to listen to those customers and think back. When you're trying to figure out who this customer is that's going to buy, that's going to buy what you're selling or is going to buy that inventory that now is all of a sudden just been pushed into a corner and the rack doesn't really make sense. It's all mix match patterns and all this kind of stuff and it's kind of an eyesore. You're going to look over there and you're going to say, okay, for some. One of you guys had said you have a ton of larges, so you have a ton of larges. What's the first thing that you can do? You can say, hey Heather, go run me a report on merchandise that has moved at size largest. Who are my large size customers? Segment that email list. Segment that and send out a blast email. Just owning it. Guys, we have, you know your email is going to say something like we have so many size larges in the store. I thought of you specifically. I think these are things that you would love. Please come see us because we are your. Our loss is your gain. We're running a promotion, running up sale on size largest sale and Saturday. Don't send, don't send, don't send the little size 2 girl that email, right? We don't want to do that. You want to send your size larges that email. Don't send your 2x girl the email that says you have largest because it just pisses the 2x girl off because she wishes she could be the largest, she's not the largest. And now all of a sudden you know you're, she's wasting her time opening something that doesn't is not relevant to her. Okay, so that's a great way for one you guys. That said you end up with onesie or specific sizes. I love that. I love having a point of sale system. You can go in, you can look at what customers are traditionally buying those larges and if you don't have a point of sale system that does that for you, this is definitely something you want to look into. Because, guys, I am a firm. You've heard me talk about it, retail bootcamp all the time. I'm a firm believer in segmenting these lists, these email lists, pulling these reports and letting your reports help you. Right. Okay. So also with that is listening to your customers and what their needs and wants are. When you repeatedly have customers that come in and they're driven by price or they're driven by something like that, target them, remarket to them. Because at this point when everything was full price, you know, it didn't work. So therefore, if you again have that list of customers that have. You have that list of customers that traditionally buy things as soon as they come in the store, that's not the customer you want to be marketing to. When you're marking these things down in there, your clearance, what type of point of sale do you suggest to break down? That specific? Springboard will do it. Light board will do it. Rain does it. MPowerpoint of sale, which I used would do it. And if you. So basically everybody's different, a little different. But you can go into your product movement history, you can segment it by size and you can pull that specific who's buying that. That's, that's basically how I know to tell you to look for those reports. Everything's a little bit different. But you guys, the reporting process, the reporting opportunities with these good point of sale systems are absolutely endless. For all of you that just specifically use Shopify, there's probably an app for that. But I definitely recommend you looking into that. And if you're in some Shopify groups, I would ask that right away. I would ask some specific questions, throw it out in the members only groups and ask them people that use Shopify. I don't have the system in front of me, otherwise I could probably figure it out, ask them how to go about that step by step. I think it's. That's really, really important. Okay, so we talked about those three steps of customers. So my step three here then is market to them. You know, that's, that's kind of what we were talking about, segmenting them out, you know, which customer it is. Now you've decided that it. You had thought it was going to be Bonnie that was going to buy this item when you bought it, but Bonnie's not interested in it. That customer's not. So now we're moving on. Right. Okay, so then what do we do? Here's some other ideas. I've talked to a lot of people that have had success and fails, but not fails. Learning opportunities with bag sales. Right. We've moved out some of this. Hold on. Stop. Let me go back. I started talking about the purge and the frustration and the just like that super immediate reaction of just putting it all on sale. Okay. So backing up a few steps further. What you could have done, what you should do as you're staying aggressive and on top of this, I highly recommend marking out a day every week to analyze what's not moving. Make a plan with that. Don't do like what I did. Would like go in my closet and have a freak out moment and be like, this has got to go. I'm over it. We got to move this out right now. Don't let your credit card statement come and realize I can't pay for this, so I need to make cash by finding Friday. We need to have a sale. Don't do that. Be aggressive with what's not moving, what you're struggling with. Find out what your staff says is a hit or a miss or you know, it's coming up a little short and make some plans to move those things more frequently. When you end up with a third of your store on a purge sale, it looks like a garage sale. When you put all that stuff to the front of your house, guys, it looks like you're having a garage sale in your living room. So when people come in, the first thing they see is a bunch of mismatched crap like you're having your garage sale right there smack dab in the living room. You want people to come in, or you're putting it on your home, your front homepage of your website, all these kind of things. It's the first thing they see that don't do that. So we all know put our sale item in the back. But I guess what I want to say is that should continually be turning over. And as you have some things as you're selling, you need to be adding some other things to it. You have a super expensive point of sales, but yours does not do that either. Brittany. I would. I don't know what point of sale you use, but I would definitely be calling my guy. I talk about that in retail boot camp a lot. I would call my guy with that point of sale system and tell him this is a need. Tell him, ask him how to build it or how to do it. There's. They probably have it somewhere. You just might not be, you know, conscious of what that is. So I would definitely make that call as soon as we get off the phone. Or off this call. Okay. So anyway, going back, we're adding a little bit here and there to those sale racks, to those, those, that selection, right? Because there's nothing worse than going in and having to dig. Like I talk about TJ Maxx and that serves a purpose. But guys, we don't want to be the TJ Maxx's. We don't want a third of our sales floor in sale inventory. So to avoid these costly mistakes of I have to purge all my inventory and I'm in a cash crunch and I'm all, I'm, I'm in, I'm in need, right. Is little by little every week you should have an addition to your sales rack. As you're selling things off there, you're adding more things to those. Right. That will avoid that whole just over frustration and demand that comes with where you need cash, you need hangers, you need floor space, all this kind of stuff. And less is more. You hear me say this in retail boot camp, a lot less is more there. People come in with a certain amount of budget that they're able to spend on clothes. They don't come in with this endless. So if you're throwing $10,000 worth of sales stuff at them, they're probably not buying it. All right. They're still going to get what they can afford to get. What do you suggest? If you're online only, same thing, guys. If you are going to have a, say, a sales section online, I highly recommend that you're adding and rotating things to that same thing little by little. Yeah, Kayla, Awesome. Hey, Retail Edge. I'm quite certain Retail edge would have a point of or have this option as well. Yeah, absolutely, Kayla. Retail edges. I'm really, I went through their kind of walkthrough, which I highly recommend everybody do. If you're looking for a point of sale system or you're looking to maybe make a move. They have a really, their, their dashboard. I'll call it your dashboard. Super user friendly. Lots of great reporting there as well. So yeah, check that out. See? So where was that? So, yes, review these items weekly. Review them often. Understand what's moving and what's not. Learning from these buying mistakes that you've made, right. So you don't make them again, are they? I go over a ton of this stuff in retail boot boot camp. But just to give you a couple things, why you're sitting on old inventory and these buying mistakes is potentially you bought them at the wrong time or you had them delivered at the wrong time. Right? Or you are, you're just making impulse buys. Impulse buys guys are for your customer. They're not for the buyer. We're all about our customers coming in and making impulse buys. But guys, we should be educated, dedicated, you know, knowledgeable buyers when it comes to market. If we're making impulse buys, we're tying up our cash. So I go into this a whole lot further in retail bootcamp, but those are just a couple things that we do as buyers that ends up with, that affects us later on where we have too much inventory on hand. Okay, so let's see. Okay, some of these things, some ideas on the moving out, the old inventory. We talked about bag sales. We talked, we talked a little bit about like, like a five or ten dollar add on rack sale. What does that mean? Brick and mortar girls. Or online. When you make a sale and you could say, hey, you purchased $50 of new arrivals or whatever, you can take anything off this rack right here for five bucks. You can take anything off this rack right here for $10. Here's the thought on that, guys, are you making your money back? Maybe not. Are you clearing it out and getting cash in hand? Yes, you are. There's a saying about, you know, getting it now versus getting it later. And you know how that actually helps you. Here's the deal. Would $10 today be more beneficial to you than $12 in two months? Yes. Or $15 in two months? Absolutely. Old inventory drains your cash. It drains your morale. It drains the momentum. It gives a, it gives bad impression to your customers that they, all they see is the same stuff coming in over and over and over. So make a plan with these things. Understand, I don't want to get into the life cycle. That's a retail bootcamp thing because that's pretty detailed. But understand the lifecycle of your products. Once you move items on the sale rack, how long, how long do you leave them there and when do you say final sale? That's. That needs to go to Goodwill. That Tammy, is honestly, what I would say is more of a lifespan of your merchandise. And at what point have you, do you feel like you've exhausted your resources? If you can honestly look at a product and say, I've done everything I can to move you to a better home, to find somebody for you, then let it go. If you are still working on going down through those three tiers of customers that can buy it, you've re merchandise it. You've. You've educated your customers and your staff on how to sell it. If you've Done those things, then move it on. If you don't do those things and you skip all that and just. It didn't get purchased within the first week of sitting on a sale rack. But yet you've yet to have a conversation about it. You haven't tried hard enough. Try harder. Make the money, make the sale. Right. One other thing that I like to do in our store, sorry, online girls, you guys can do that five or ten dollar add on thing too. You can do that within Shopify. It's an app for customers who bought this. They can get this. It's just this add on. I don't know what the apps called, but if anybody's on here that knows what that is, maybe post it here. But you can easily do additional add ons into people's carts, right? And they're one. They're all sales final type things or whatever. But it's that little impulse buy type thing again. We're all about our customers doing impulse buying, not us as buyers doing impulse buying. Okay. This is a little game that we played at our store. And I'm not, I don't mean to talk quiet like I'm embarrassed we did this at all. But there's nothing wrong with getting your customers involved. One thing that I would do is if I had something that was sitting on the sale rack and it hadn't been moving, I would when somebody comes in and trying on and be like, hey, Jamie, would you do me a favor? This hit the sale rack and I don't know why, I think this is the cutest flipping thing I have seen in a long time. I loved it. Can you just try it on and give me a testimony about it? Tell me what you like about it, what you don't like about it. You guys, I promise. And it was almost like a game. We would literally high five each other in the back room because nine chances out of 10, that person bought it because we made them feel special. We made them feel like it was something we thought they would like. We told them why we thought we'd like it. We talked about it like it was awesome. We didn't talk about it like it was yesterday's news. And who gives a crap? It's just sitting over in the corner. No, we made that thing exciting. We made it out like, this thing needs a home. Oh my gosh, this thing is so cute. I can totally see you wearing this to your son's ball game this weekend or your husband is retiring, right? This would be awesome for his retirement party, whatever it is. Would you mind just trying it on for me? Because I want to understand why this item hasn't sold. Nine chances out of ten, they'd be in the dressing room and be like, Sarah, I don't know why this hasn't sold. I really like this. Oh, my gosh, it has pockets or whatever, right? Next thing you know, that thing's going to the cash register before I have to mark it down further. So it's kind of like this little game. It's the why didn't it sell? Kind of try on game that we would play at the store. Anyway, same thing. If you've got a bunch of jeans that have just not been moving, they start throwing them into the dressing room with every top that you take in there. Why? Because it completes the outfit, for one. It gets them to try it on. But if you just tell them about how awesome the product is and throw it in there, most times they're going to try it on. That in and of itself keeps that item from hitting and getting lost in the. In the sale rack. Because I know you guys have beautiful golden fines, amazing fines just hidden there in your sale rack. Right? Okay. We talked about avoiding purging and getting in over your head. So doing a little bit at a time so you don't feel overwhelmed is huge. Step five is talking with your vendors. So for those of you guys that are sitting on smalls, you're sitting on extra larges. Guys. This doesn't work with a lot of those la buyer vendors because in all honesty, they prepack things. They tell you what it's going to be. You guys are getting what you're paying for there. But for those of you that shop with some of those better brands, which I'm a huge advocate for, because that's where your markup is. That's where you know your better return on investment is. If you call them and say, look, you know, Jerry, I love your line, but I don't need the smalls. I actually would like to start at mediums and work my way up to extra larges. You know, Jerry very well might work with you. He really. They. They might. It doesn't hurt for you to ask. If you have a problem with a specific fit of their line, talk to them about that. Make these conversations with your vendors a key part of your buying. Again, like I said in my talk at Summit, if we aren't the voice for the product, bringing the customer's voice for the product back to the sales rep, they don't hear it from anybody. So they can't fix the problem. If you continually have a bad bias cut or a shirt that is not cut loose enough in the arms, and if you continue to have too short of a length in the rise on things, talk to your customers about that or talk to your sales reps about that. That helps them, which in turn is going to help the line, which helps you, which helps your customers, which puts money in your bank. We like that. Right? Okay, what about when someone, when something just doesn't fit right? Great buy just runs small. Perfect. Colette, here's the thing. Find that out immediately. This goes back to some of these things, like staying aggressive with products when they come in. I highly recommend you and your staff trying them on. I, you know, I'm a different size fit than some of my high school girls. So, you know, my stepmom worked for me at the store. I would encourage us all to try things on, get a picture of it, move around, sit in it, whatever it is, have a fit if it fit session. If it doesn't fit immediately within seven days, that's most people, most businesses want to know, call them right away and say, hey, this isn't fitting. Now. I also, some of these better brands that I carried, I had a lot of success with them, calling them and saying, hey, we haven't moved any in seven days. Not really sure what the problem is right now. Customers are saying they like the fit. Customers are saying it's okay, but nonetheless it's not moving. Most times they're gonna note that in your file and they're gonna say, give it another 15 days, call me back. So you make a note on your calendar and your plan or whatever it is, Figure it out, try, have it on, try it on more people and make that call in 15 days and say, you know what? Hey, I'm sorry, this still is not moving for us. What can we do? If you have a good relationship with your vendors, most of them will make it, will either return it for you, swap it out for you, sends you a call tag. It doesn't tie up your cash. Where we get in trouble is when we get lazy and then we call them six months later. Well, by that time they've moved on to a totally different season. Right. And it's not of interest. But most times with my better brands, and when I say better brands, I mean like tribal, Karen Kane, Jag, Liverpool, Renoir, even Billabong would help me do these kind of things. Certainly Joseph Ripkoff, Aaron London, all sorts of different things. Goodwill bracelets, did it. Even if we had a specific item that's not moving, I call them up and just say, hey, guys, it's Sarah. This hasn't been moving for us. And sometimes they'd even be like, are you serious? Sarah, we have blown out of this in the South. Get it back to us so we can sell it back to the south people, and then we'll credit you and we'll turn around and invest that in something else later. Dear John, Articles of society. Absolutely. Thank you, Leslie. Those guys were fantastic. Same thing. Guys, I beg you, if you have not started dabbling, if you, if you're in it to win it for the long haul with your business, if you've not started dabbling in some of these better brands that want to know you by name and want to look out for you, I please urge you to do that. I urge you to do that. Okay, so talking with these vendors, talking with your customers, those are my big things. No matter what you do, whatever markdowns you're taking, whatever purges you're doing, whatever you're doing to try to move product out, have that conversation with the customer. Please don't just let it sit over there in a corner to collect dust and treat it like you don't want to see it. Because if you don't want to see it and your staff doesn't want to see it, your customers don't want to see it. So I'm sure for all of you who've heard me talk on a number of different things, it's weird that I always circle back around to it all lays on our shoulders. And I know that's not what you want to hear. Some of you probably logged in here today for an easy button on, an easy quick fix for getting rid of old inventory. But retail is very hard business. There is no easy fix for this. I'm sorry. So stay aggressive. Be on top of, be on top of your inventory. What's moving and what's not. Always ask why, Ask why again and figure it, you know, and figure out a plan to keep cycling things into your sale area. Keep cycling things into a new watch party, a new try on session, things like that. But I highly recommend, you just got to stay aggressive. Get a plan. Mark out on your content or on your, on your schedule. Mark out a time that you are going to walk your floor, walk your warehouse, really look at things and run those sales numbers. Because if it's not there, it's sold or it's been taken, right? So you want to make sure you're up on the Movement history of your products. Look and see, you know, what is working, what's not, who's selling, certain things, who's not. These are all reports that you can run. Who your best selling sales staff is, what are they selling, what lines are they selling? You know, like Ashley talks about when she worked at the Buckle, she was the go to denim person because that was kind of the thing she killed at. She was amazing at, right? If you have a specific line that's not moving for you, find out who your sales staff is that really is bought into that line and ask them, like, what's your thought? How do we get this to move? I'm putting you in charge of moving out at least $6,000 worth of tribal, at least $6,000 worth of jeans. Whatever it is. Get your staff involved. Let them know what your issue is. Let them know that, hey, look, before you guys come to me and say you want new rompers or you want new summer dresses, we got to move some of this other stuff out. Same with your kids. When they want to go to the movie and they haven't done their dishes or made their bed, there you go, do this. And then we'll do that same thing. So I hope that helps. I hope, I hope I gave you guys some ideas. I just want to scroll back through here and make sure I didn't have any notes that I avoided or skipped over. But yeah. So here's your takeaways. Get on the phone. Oops. Get on the phone. Figure out how to run these reports with your point of sale. People make that happen. Get aggressive and don't just wait until those items have zero dollar value. Get aggressive in your markdown strategy and your movement strategy. With those from the beginning, if they have sat there and nobody's looking at them, they're not being moved. They're not even going into the dressing room. They're never even landing in a cart. Maybe you just need to move them around. Move them around on your website, move them around in your stor store. Get more people to try them on. Again, when somebody comes into your store and they're kind of. They're just looking around, walk over with this on a hanger and say, hey, Mandy, what do you think of this? This hasn't. Nobody's been looking at this. I think it's super cute. What do you think? Just ask the question. Make that conversation with them. Make them a part of this whole business that you're running. Because that way they feel like they're at home with you. They feel like you care they're going to continue to come back. That is harder obviously to do online. But these communications, these things, you know, stay aggressive with them, make them a part of your business. That will inevitably help with, help with your inventory and take away number 20. I don't even know I'm lost at this point. But don't be an impulse buyer, right? You want impulse buys for your customers. You want to sell them on impulse. Don't be that. When you go to the, when you go to market. Oh yes. Here's one other thing I did want to say. If you tell me I get this a lot but I got such a great deal on it, I just couldn't pass it up. I got such a great deal on it. Now it's not moving. I hate to break it to you, but there very well might be a reason you got such a great deal on it. Maybe the brand and vendor sitting there at their sales meeting like crap, we got to get rid of this crap. Nobody wants it. Lets us run some $5 special of it at market and those buyers are going to come in and snatch it up because they think it's such a great deal. What does that mean? It means their problem just got put on your shoulders. You took their problem away, right? You bought it from them. Now it's on. Now it's on you to deal with this. There's a reason why a lot of times things go on sale. You missed, missed the answer. How long should you keep it marked down before you send it to Goodwill? Tiffany, that there's not a true. I'm against saying everything, 60 days on things. A lot of it depends on when you got it in. A lot of it depends on the weather. A lot of it, you know, it really does. It depends on what's happening within your community. I guess my thing on that is going back to your, your types of customers. Who did you intend for it to be sold to if that person is not buying it? That classification of customers not buying it, move on. Do you have two other customers that potentially might buy it? Is your middle of the road customer going to buy it or is your bottom feeder sale person going to buy it? If you've exhausted those and you do not in your honesty, you look at that item, you cannot think of one person that you could market that to. And when I say one person, I don't mean Tammy, I mean the customer. Like Tammy mean that demographic. If you can't think of one demographic, one type of customer that would buy that and you're you Are committed to being over it, and you've exhausted all avenues to sell it, throw it in a bag, take it to Goodwill. That's not the answer you probably wanted, but for me to say 60 days, I'd be cutting my foot off by saying 60 days. Because hell, who knows, you might have had, you might have had blizzard conditions for 20 of those days. Right. And spring didn't come like we thought it was. Now all of a sudden six days hits, you take it to Goodwill, and the very next day people come in and ask for exactly what you just got rid of. So that's my advice on that. Let's see, I saw a boutique owner the other night that was online. They had three different size models. Yes. Oh, that's not yet absolutely perfect. I thought that was brilliant. Yes, I think it's brilliant too. And that kind of goes back to what I was saying at the beginning when we would get things in at the start store. A lot of times I'd have my high school girl try them on. I would try them on and my mother in law would try them on because we were able to then educate our customers on how it fit different people. Right? And huge selling point when a mom came in to buy their high school daughter something. And I would say, hey, our high school staff member loved this. She just tried it on the other day. She, she said she was gonna wear it with the wedges and she's gonna wear it to graduation and blah, blah, blah. That helps me sell that. Or when the 60 year old lady comes in and she's looking for something fun and classy and but, but yet trendy. And I say this, this item right here. My stepmom tried this on the other day and she loved it and she's a size 14 or whatever it is that helps sell it. So all building that education surely builds those sales. All right, I got awesome boots from a vendor who did this. Sometimes they had good things they are out of season to buy for next season. If you watch closely, $3 boots bought in March, sold in August for back to school. Yeah, you guys, you just have to kind of watch. Honestly, when I buy, I look at something and I have got to be able to name a couple people that are gonna buy it if I can't put a name, because I knew my customers like that. If I couldn't put a name or a type of person with that purchase, guys, I'd walk away and I'd think about it because otherwise I got caught in impulse buying and it's not good to keep a sales rack out all the time in front of your store, Correct? Yes. Don't you guys? It's. It's. That's embarrassing. Don't have your sale rack constantly full of stuff in front of your. In front of your store. Your store should be inviting and your store should be exciting. And if you want to put a sale rack out there every once in a while, that's great. But don't have it like camp out there and have birds crap on it and it just grow out there and people see the same thing. Because the same people probably drive by your store all the time and they are quick to see, especially if it's this floral print dress that's on the end of the rack. And it stayed on the end of the rack for three weeks. Yeah. Move. Move that out. Let's see. Hold on a second. Has anybody else had like a, like lost their voice still since Summit? That is me. Maybe. I. I don't know.
