Sell Boutique Products For A Profit: 5 Strategies Necessary

Go into business like you are in a battle together, but yet we can grow together and survive in this boutique industry as it is today. And one of the biggest things that we do in the Boutique Hub is we do a course called Retail Bootcamp. And you may see about a hundred different Boutique Hub members roaming around CNC and the fashion district. This week. We have a big conference. We were downstairs earlier today. And so we're very loud, vibrant group. And anyway, if you'd like any other information about that, happy to give it to you. But one of the big questions that we're always asked at the Hub is how to sell at profit. You know, it's a big question. We are always dealing with markdowns. We're always dealing with trying to make sure we're bringing in the best items for our customers. Right. And to avoid these markdowns. And so that brought me to our topic today. When I asked for somebody from the Hub to speak, I said, sure, I'd be happy to speak. And I can tell you I have about 20 years of retail experience. So I'm here today to give you some tips and tricks on things that I have done over the time, over my years in retail that have worked and some things that I've not worked, that I've definitely learned from. We always feel that if we're not winning, we're learning, not losing. You know, we're always learning from our mistakes, and that is something in retail. Retail changes every day, constantly, and so there's always an opportunity to learn. So today I wanted to come to you and talk to you about five strategies necessary to be selling at profit. Who's heard of the boutique energy crisis? I feel like this is a real thing. It's not taught about very often. What I mean by this is the amount of energy we're bringing into our business I think has a direct reflect on the whole idea of selling a profit. In my coaching with the Boutique Hub, a lot of times will tell you that the questions you're asking and the results you're wanting are not necessarily easy answers. Right. A lot of it falls back on us as boutique owners. So today, what I want to talk to you about is the energy crisis that you're dealing with in your workplace and that you're dealing with personally that can directly affect. Affect the profit of your business. So I'm always asked, how do I reduce the amount of discounts given in my store? Do you guys ask yourself that question? Do you look at your sales racks? Do you think, how do I. How Do I avoid this? I always have access discounts. I feel like I'm giving things away. How can I set myself up for success in my retail space? Whether that's online, brick and mortar, or crossover of both, how can I be more profitable? When I coach people, whether coaching a basketball team or volleyball team, or I coach people in the retail world without raising my family, I always have this ask why three times thing. So how can I sell more profitably? Why do I have excess inventory going on sale? So I'd ask my staff. I'd ask them, why. Okay, so why do I put things on sale? Why do we. Why do we put things on sale? Interaction. Yeah. Time. Okay. You know, instead of it just sitting there, you want a little bit of money back so you can bring in a few items. Absolutely. Okay. Yep. We want to move it. It's taking up space. Why is it not selling? I knew you're going to say that. Why isn't it selling? Go ahead. That's okay. A lot of times my staff, when I would say, so why isn't it selling? They'd say, I don't know. I don't know. No one want it. Nobody wants it. Why doesn't anyone want it? Where I'm going with this is, is it bad timing? Was it a bad fit? Is it priced wrong? Why ask why three times? If you make this a process in your coaching, your team, if you make it a process in your. In your learning about your discounts, you will. You'll learn, right? You're going to actually get to the root of the problem. So when you have a customer, a staff member, to say, oh, I'm sorry, I just didn't sell. You know, when you look at your sales racks and there's an excessive amount of inventory there that you just feel like, man, this was such gonna be a winner. The guys, the sales reps, told me this was gonna fly off my racks. It's gonna fly off my shelves. It was a proven winner, but yet here it is. Why is that happening? And you're. You're $14 an hour girl, $10 an hour girl, whatever she is. She's like, I don't know. Just didn't sell. Nobody wanted it. Okay. Why didn't they want it? I don't know. They just didn't. That's not an answ. So I thought it was going to fly off the shelves. We've all said that, and we've had reps tell us that. Right? They're saying this is a. What do they say? This is A proven winner. You know, it's blowing out, right? And we trust them and we get excited about it, right? Who here bought anything this morning? Who invested in inventory this morning? Anybody? Were you pumped about it when you went in there and you're like, man, this is going to be awesome. So you're pumped about it. Tell me about that feeling you had. Tell me about it. I thought he was excited. Yeah, it's gonna sell. I know it is. And you, in your mind, you had a customer back home that is gonna get it, right? And you're so pumped to go tell that customer about it, because you know it's gonna make her feel good, it's gonna make her energized. She's gonna go out and live her life, right? Wearing your items that you came here and got. So that's a great feeling. That's high energy. I like it. That sells clothes. Go ahead. So it just sits there. I don't know. Why is it just sitting there? What's happening? Because we were so excited about what we were bringing in, and we had our mind wrapped around all this stuff, but yet there it is. It's just sitting there. How come? So what I need from you to do is implement this three why? Process, right? And then stop. Take control of your business. This is a true energy crisis in our boutiques, and it all lies back on our shoulders. And I wish I was here today to give you an easy button or a pill or something that was just going to make all. But at the end of the day, it all really comes back on us. Because the experience you had, ma', am, when you were out here in the booth space is one of high energy, and you're excited, and you can't wait to get back and tell your customers and show your customers your findings, right? But something happens in the process. Something happens between today and three weeks from now, six weeks from now, and sometimes four months from now when these products come in, something happens, and that's on us. There's a lack of creativity. It drains our energy. We need to be proactive to re merchandise. Right? If something's not moving in your store, you need to stop, take control, and look and say, has that pair of pants been in the same spot for the last four weeks? Have I done something with that? Am I being motivated to move that? Should I reshoot it? Has it had one picture taken of it in the lifecycle of it in my store? I should get more energized to reshoot that, right? To show it again, reinvent it. Who here has had a customer? Just raise the hands. Brick and mortar stores, online only stores both. Okay, so same goes whether you're brick and mortar online. How many times have you had something in your store and it's been there for, I don't know, a season. You reinvent it, show it a different way come fall or come spring. And all of a sudden, customer that you know has seen it before comes in is like, oh, my gosh, Sarah, when did you get that? That is awesome. I love it. And all of a sudden you want to buy it, right? And in your mind you're like, are you kidding me? That it's been there for 10 weeks? But you bet you're taking her all the way to the cash register. Everything is good. However, if you you re merchandise it, you reintroduced it, right? A lack of creativity, of showing customers. If we don't show them, we can't sell them. Guys, a lot of this is really retail 101 stuff. But what I'm telling you is in this energy crisis that we're all dealing with, we forget some of these things. We forget some of the common sense things that we learned we knew we were going to do when we started our store. Try on sessions. Get creative. Offer try on sessions. If something's not moving, the best way to move it is to offer it to a customer. When they're going in the dressing room, just be like, hey, would you do me a favor and try on this pair of pants? I just haven't had anybody try it on yet. I need to know how they fit. Do you mind doing me a favor and trying it on? Right? You're already going in there anyway, so. And then I'll always say, especially in pants, you don't need to come out and show me. If you don't love them, you don't love them, you love them, great, whatever. But I just appreciate, you know, doing me a favor. When we do that with our pants in the store, you guys, we tend to start selling a lot more of them. Pants are really hard. Because a lot of times women don't like to try on pants. It almost makes you remind you that you need to go to the gym, right? So frustrating. So trying on pants is hard. If you look at someone and you think their body type is going to work for this pair of pants, you want to give them some education. But even better, they're trying on a top. Hey, these pair of pants are going to be killer. Just try them on. You know, if you don't want to try Them on, don't worry about it. But I'm just going to hang them in the dressing room for you anyway. Most times the customer is going to, as they're trying the top on, they're going to be like, okay, maybe she knows what she's talking about. I'll try the pants on. Next thing you know, you've made a sale with the pants. But what did I not do? I did not get lazy. I did not just offer the lady the shirt. I served her right. Lack of creativity also is often we forget to provide that education and that value. A lot of times offering them that pair of pants is a little bit more about servicing. Right. The education, how best to wear a pair of pants. What shoes are going to go well with that? What, what waistline is going to fit on fit your body style, all these things. That is us doing our job as education for you online members. Maybe it's in your copy, maybe it's in your description of your items that you're selling. We all joke about the lady that puts the item on the website and says black dress. Well, unless they are not unable to see, they all know it's a black dress, right? What are the features of that black dress? What's the value of the black dress? What body style does that black dress fit? Right? Paint me a picture in my mind, where am I going to wear that black dress? Show me a picture of this dress being worn by a woman on a date at a restaurant with her kids bending down doing something. It's functional right there. That one picture is telling me a story. But that's being creative. Last thing, send it back if it did not work for you and you know it's not the right fit for your customer. Whatever it is, all these reasons that you found that it's not going to work. I hope you have a good reputation with one of your sales reps that you can pick up the phone and make a call and say, Joe, this just didn't work for us. Joe, remember how excited you said I should be about this item? We got it in, Joe. It's not working, Joe. That wasn't right. This or the sample that I looked at was a long sleeve and you sent it in a three quarter sleeve. You know, what do we want to do about it? The other reason I think that is a big, big thing is it puts you back in control of your inventory, which you want to be, right? Because your inventory is supposed to work for you, not against you in everything you do, right? But also if you have A true issue with that item and you don't let your vendor know about it. The vendor can't let the manufacturer know about it. You see how this just trickles down? So be a voice, right? Be loud. Let them know what's working and what's not. So when they go back to their sales reps meetings, they can say, hey, I had a lot of my customers that just didn't like that three quarter length sleeve. They saw it sampled in a long, that's what they wanted, right? So when we go to production next time, you better make sure to win those customers back. We go back with a long sleeve. So the bottom line is you have 24 hours in a day, seven days a week. That's it. That's never going to change. It's the same for you as it is for me, right? Do what you do best and hire the rest. My whole point here is if you have too many irons in the fire and your energy is draining and you come into work and you're ready to sell, but now by the time it's 2 o' clock in the afternoon, your energy is so drained because you're doing things that are not building you up in your business that when your customer does come in and want to buy that item that you are so excited about, your energy is so drained you don't even remember to show it to her. That happens. I can remember in my store where graphics was not is not my thing. Making a Facebook cover photo potentially might have taken me an hour and a half. Not my God given gift. I'll own it, right? So I would be sitting back there with PicMonkey Open or Canva opened or whatever and I'm going through my two different computers trying to find this one picture that I think I know I exists. I'm trying to come up with a clever caption. I'm trying to do all this stuff to make this graphic look great for my Facebook cover. In the meantime, the door opens, I hear a customer come in. I'm like, okay. I walk out my, hey, how's it going? Is that very energetic? Do you feel very excited? Do you feel like Sarah even cares that you're in her store? No. You know why my energy was like that though? Because I just spent the last hour and a half jacking around with Canva and I don't know what I'm doing and my energy is depleted and therefore it has trickled down onto my customer. Then where does it trickle down? To my pocketbook. Right. Because all that inventory that I was going to show her, she doesn't even want to look at now because I set a really kind of negative tone in my store. My energy is depleted. Therefore I'm not showing her things and she's not buying, right? So if you have too many irons in the fire and you're spending your time doing things that are not income generating, that are basically draining your energy, you guys, I'm getting to the point where this is going to affect your profitability, right? Because it's affecting your energy. So ask yourself, do you run out of time? Have you let items sit too long in your store? Are you being mindful of the life cycle of your products? Who here understands? And I'm sure Dan Javlin just spoke this morning, he very well might have said this, but you get bananas, right? Do you all know the banana analogy? You buy a case of banana, right? You buy a case of clothes, they deliver to your store. You rip the tape off, you open the box up, those green bananas now turn yellow. They're starting to age. You put them out on your sales floor. It is only a matter of time until those bananas are now brown, right? Who wants brown bananas? Nobody wants brown bananas. Do you let items sit on your store too long before you make a move, before you get excited about things, before you make one of those decisions? Do I need to reshoot it, re merchandise it? Do I need to have a try on session with my customers? Do I need to potentially be sending this thing back? Get aggressive, be energized, right? And make a move on these products? Do you regret your purchases? You know, do you have like today, ma'? Am? You're so excited about things, but do you get things in maybe that you're not quite so excited about at some point you're like, when did I even order that? What was I doing when I ordered that? That's not me. That happened, right? Who knows what MWWA means? MWWA means manage while walking around. Manage while walking around. I'm huge on team management. That is like something I'm very, very passionate about. And this energy crisis that I'm talking about, that trickles down onto your penny customer and trickles down into your pocketbook before it gets to your customer, you guys, it gets to your staff. If you're not motivated and your energy is low, your staff's gonna be low, right? They're not gonna be motivated to sell and move product either. Manage by walking around gives them that opportunity to see where you're at today and communicate the way you communicate Right. Because if your big thing is customer service and you're a rock star at it, you want to train your employees to be a rock star at it. You want to train them, the whole system, the process of looking at a customer, listening to your customer, serving your customer, right? That increases your turn rate, which increases your profitability. So manage my walking around. That is a great way to stay energized in your business and keep your staff motivated and going. My last thing again about the staff is, does your staff understand your mission? From of you who have worked with me at the boutique Hub, you hear me talk an awful lot about your staff and the great game of business we're all in. I mentioned earlier, I'm a coach. I love basketball. Who here watches basketball, football, anything? Any sports fans, right? So before the game, right before the game starts, you have your team out there on the sales floor, on the field or the court, right? And they all know what their role is. And even better, they know what end zone they're going to or what goal they're shooting at, right? Because somebody's told them. You've coached them through that, right? Can you imagine a bunch of guys lining up, you know, packers play tonight. And the packers get out there, they have no idea what end zone they're going to. That'd be a mess, right? It's not gonna work out very good. No. Prior to that, they've practiced. They went through the processes. They understand the mission behind their whole game. Your staff is the same way you train them. You should understand. They should understand the mission. They should understand the products you're bringing in. They should understand the excitement you had today at CMC about the products you just bought. So when they come in, when those items come in, they can translate that down to their customer, right? Because that continues to sell products. So does your team know your mission? Do they know what's important to you, what's important to you in the business and the hundreds of thousands of dollars you're investing into your business and where you guys need to be next week, next month and at the end of the year, right. If they do and they truly understand that, they're gonna understand staying energized in the build the business and keeping inventory, turning to be profitable. So my main point here is, whatever you're saying, what people say is, is the problem. It's not usually the problem. You ask that why three times. Why are items not selling? Why are they sitting there? Why do you think the customer's not interested, right? That's when you're going to find the root of the problem. That's when you're going to be able to turn your inventory faster, make better buying decisions and learn. Right? Because every discount we take is an education. We should learn from every discount we take. Right? Okay, so five tips to sell to be more profitable. Discounts are inevitable. 100%. The day that we live in right now, everybody is looking for a discount. That's what they say, right? However people want quality, people want service. So that's what we're going to give them. And we're going to give it to them fast. We're going to give it to them before they can make that decision of something else. Right. We're going to be so excited about the project or the process, so excited about the inventory that we're giving them that they're making. You're making that sale. So get aggressive and get excited. You could have gold in your racks, and I mean absolute gold. But if you're not showing it, you're not selling it. This is where I want to talk a little bit about sales versus promotions. Right? Do we understand what a sale is? Take this a little further. August winter coats, maybe. I'm from Wisconsin, so I'll talk winter coats. Y' all might not do winter coats, but in August we get winter coats in. Am I going to run a sale on winter coats in August, or am I going to run a promotion on winter coats in August? Promotion. Promotion. Absolutely. 100%. Why? Because I'm going to get people excited about winter coats. I'm going to make them understand that I am the destination for winter coats. When you're ready for a winter coat, I'm planning, planting the seed with promotion for you to want to come and invest in a winter coat with me. Right. Come January or February, am I running a promotion on winter coats, or am I running a sale on winter coats? Sale. I'm definitely running a sale because I want that stuff gone. Because I'm fixing to bring in shorts or swimsuits or something like that. Right. That's a big difference. You could have absolute gold in your racks, but if you're not showing them, you're not selling them. Right. And I'll be very honest, the way people display things anymore, that whole color scheme, it's kind of going away. Right. A lot of people are. Not necessarily. When was the last time you had a customer come in and they specifically just wanted an entire orange outfit? They. Not necessarily. They want a story. They want you to tell them a story with their. What they're buying, right? So you're painting this picture for them. If you put all of your items in one spot and all your gold deep down into your racks and they're not visible through table displays or half mannequins or wall displays, face out waterfall, anything like that, they get lost, right? People don't like to dig at boutiques. People like to dig at TJ Maxx. People like to dig at the thrift stores. They don't come into a boutique to dig, like pull their sleeves up and just start pushing through racks. They like to be inspired in boutiques. So again, this is your job, right? This is your job to either do it yourself or have your team do it. You have to do that by being motivated, right? You have to do that by having enough energy to do these things. So be mindful of your delivery dates and what's in demand. Be mindful of your merchandising and what's working and what's not. And keep in mind, like I mentioned earlier, it might be old to you, but is it really old to your customer? If it's still relevant in the industry, pull it out, redisplay it, re merchandise it, take a new flat, lay on it, grab a new customer, take a new photo shoot of it, right? Reintroduce it, make it new and exciting again. And if you have a customer that, or I'm sorry, a staff member that you hear them talk down about a product, they're like, I'm so over it. Get a hold of them right away and say, you might be over it, but that doesn't mean our customer is. Their money is still green and this is still relevant out in the world and people are still wanting this product. So let's get excited about it. Even though you might not want it personally, that doesn't mean your negativity towards a specific item needs to reflect down to our customer, okay? Pay attention to the lifecycle of the product. Inventory is not like wine. It's not going to get any better with age. As a matter of fact, it is going to grow. It is going to grow on the hangers, collect some dust, maybe change some colors, things like that. If you know it is approaching the end of its life cycle, it's not going to be in demand anymore. Maybe right now, maybe you're sitting on Halloween T shirts, maybe you carry a lot of graphic tees. If you are sitting on a lot of something like a graphic tee for Halloween, you need to get aggressive right now and be making a move. Because right now people are Starting to think Thanksgiving, they're starting to think Christmas. That's what's important to them because they know they're going to be able to wear that product longer. Right? So you don't want any Halloween tees in your store come November 1st. They actually aren't really worth anything on November 1st. Right. But a lazy, on energetic boutique owner is just going to let those sit there potentially maybe in the middle of a rack somewhere that they've forgotten about. An energized boutique owner is going to pull those out, get those front and center, do a window display, do a table display, make them on the front page of their website, website, whatever it is, introduce them to the customer in a way that like, hey, supplies are limited. This is all we have. You know, get them. Now, maybe you're at this point now you're doing a sale, right? Because you're doing a sale on things you never want to see again. You want them gone, you want to turn it into cash so you can reinvent that cash, reinvest that cash into something else. Do your own R D, social media, TV shows, markets, etc. What is open, go ahead and get out and see what the world is seeing. That's why you're all here, right? Hopefully you're here investing in inventory. You notice I don't use the word buying and inventory. He's investing because everything you're investing in today supposed to make you money down the road, right? So this is an investment. So hopefully you're doing your research and development while you're here to see what's relevant, you know, what are, what are other boutique owners doing? This is why I love the Hub. You know, a lot of collaboration going on there. What are you doing for stocking hats for the winter or beanies or whatever you get, whatever the term is, right? Maybe, maybe you're done with this particular type of hat and you want to bring in something else. You know, research and development. What is my customer seeing? What is in demand with my customer? What's on, what's trending on TV shows, what's trending in the social media, what's trending in movies, things like that. That's all part of your research and development life cycle of a product. Again, bad fit if it has a bad fit to it or it has a bad feel to it. I have a lot of customers that were big on texture. Its life cycle is minimal. It's not relevant to my customer. So making a move and making it early, target your customers, get to know them and serve Them. Who here has done a customer interview? Who here polled their customers before you got on the plane to come to LA to find out what they even wanted? You know, what are they looking for this season? Do you know? Are you the best investor for inventory that they need, right? Or is somebody else doing a better job? Because is somebody else asking them what are the styles that you're looking for? What are the things relevant going on in your life that you need fashion for in the next few weeks, in the next few months? How can I better serve you right? Get, get to know your customer. I'm a big one on asking. I mentioned that in the very beginning. Ask why three times. Well, I want trendy clothes. Why do you want trendy clothes? I want to look nice. Why do you want to look nice? Because I don't want to go out for dinner with my husband and have the lady at the table next to me look better. I don't want my daughter to come down for breakfast and say, God, mom, why don't you ever dress up? I don't want you to show, show up to my kids soccer game and be embarrassed. That's the why, guys. That's the why. Not that I want to look nice. We all want to look nice. That's a blanket umbrella statement that just doesn't really mean anything. Get to know your customers. Emails, phone calls, Facebook ads, postcards. Communicate with them in the language that they speak, right? We all speak a little bit different. We all live in a a little bit different world. Your customers might be different than her customer. They might communicate different. You, that's up to you to find out. When we want to sell our products at a profit, we want to be able to reach them, target them, speak to them, get an action out of them. Right Now, I always talk that we have three types of customers in my store. I would say we have our Cadillac Escalade customers, we have our Chevy Malibu customers, We have our Geometric customers. You guys, customers, you can call them whatever you want. But the bottom line is my Cadillac Escalade customers chase down the UPS FedEx truck. When that truck pulled up in front of my store, they were there. The printer had a box cutter with them. They were ready to rip it out and just buy it right there, right? Because they wanted it first. They wanted the best stuff. They weren't interested in price at all. They didn't care. They just wanted the newest best brush, make a splash item, right? My shabby MC customers, they were interested in the quality, but they were a little, they were Much more price conscious, right? They wanted that longevity item. Then my geometrical customers. I didn't market to them. Fun promotions. I didn't market to them, you know, middle of the road. I marketed them when I was having a sale. They were all three very relevant customers in my business that I knew the language they spoke and I knew how to market them correctly, right? To be much more profitable in my business. Tip number four, don't discount the winners, guys. This is the same as when I said you might have gold in those racks, but if you don't pull that gold out and show it, you're not going to sell it, right? Same goes here for your. Your winners don't do blanket sales. Blanket sales are a true sign of an unenergized boutique owner. A boutique owner that's not organized, boutique owner that doesn't have a content plan. A boutique owner that just does not have a marketing plan that comes in is like payrolls in a week and a half and I need cash. Let's just run a sale. Everybody put it out there. We need to run a sale. Guess what? People are going to come in and they're going to buy the gold, they're going to buy the good stuff. And guess what? That crap that you never want to see again is still going to sit there because you have just overall said we're going to run a big sale. Who does, who doesn't go for the absolute best, right? You can think of big names that never discount themselves. They just don't. You can think of department stores, they don't do the fragrances, they don't do the makeup, all these kind of things. Diamonds. When is the last time you were able to go to a very high end diamond jeweler and get 50% off diamond sale and get it off the good diamonds. You know, it just doesn't happen. So run a sale. We talked about the difference between sales and promotion. Run a sale to get rid of the stuff you never want to see again. The stuff that you know is tying up cash. I always, I was trained to look at my inventory as 20 or $50 bills hanging on a hanger. I didn't see shirts, I didn't see jeans. I saw money. And it was taunting me. Every day I'd walk into my store and there it was hanging there. And I'd look at it and think, I need that money in my pocket so I can go do something with it. Because I can't spend inventory. I am not going to pay rent with inventory. I'm not going to Pay a car payment with inventory. I'm not going to get on a plane to come out to LA to network and learn from anybody with inventory. Nobody takes inventory, they only take cash. Right. So I'm going to run a promotion on new introductory lines, you know, planting the seed, those type of things. So two very important roles in retail. All right, tip five, get a plan. I'm big on habits, some sort of plan every week that you don't steer away from. Right. Knowing your social media posts are a big one. Social media is an animal and it can take so much time. And doing the graphics, like I said, you can just run so behind on your day to day because you're trying to get together this super cool graphic that might be draining your energy, all these kind of things, or you're driving down the road and all of suddenly like, oh, shoot, I want to make a post on that new arrival. So you end up getting in a time of crunch and you end up posting something random, right? And you're just, you're trying to post it out to reach everybody, but it actually is targeting no one because it's not specific enough. And a lot of times when we do those kind of things, we forget to put web addresses on there or social handles or anything on there that is relevant, where a person can actually look at it and come back and find us. Right. All that stuff is a direct reflect on the energy that you have and you're exerting into your business. Are you introducing about 20 new arrivals each week? That's what I talk to a lot of stores and they're like, well, I really try to aim to do 20 new arrivals a week. Okay, fine. Are you selling from half of those, three quarters of those? Are you maybe only selling an eighth of those? Right. If so, what are you doing with the rest of them before you bring in that next 20 the next week? What happens is a lot of, of times boutique owners go out and they invest in inventory, they always feel like they need to be bringing in something new. Something new, Something new. But back on slide three, we talked about the fact that just because it's not new to you doesn't mean it's not new to somebody else. Your, your customers are very busy people. We're very busy people. How many different things do we have going on in a day? If you think your boat or your customer is constantly seeing everything you post, you're crazy. They're not. So I guarantee you, you guys get really excited and post something tomorrow or Thursday or Friday, whenever you get home. And it could be something you might have posted in June or July. And if you remerchanize it, well, do a nice layout with it. Your customers gonna say, oh, my gosh, that's so cute. When did you get that in? Just like we talked before. Right. So don't always be on this whole, I need to introduce 20 new items a week. If you're not getting a good stuff through on those, stop the insanity and go back and figure out why am I not getting a good sell through on those. What do I need to do to be more active to create a faster turn, to take that inventory off the hanger and get a cash in my pocketbook, get a better plan for introducing those items. So, yeah, if you're only selling through a quarter of the, perhaps you're giving away too many options. I always talk to a lot of boutique owners that like to bring in a ton of opportunities. Options. I want to give my customer a lot of options. I'm going to tell you a story unrelated to clothing, but a restaurant. The other day I was with my kids, we went to a restaurant called Mai Pie, and it's a place where you build your own pizza. I'm sure you all have seen something like this. Well, the line was crazy long. I'm standing there working my way around the line, and when I would get over to this wall is where I was going to get to build my own pizza. Well, they had like six different types of crust. It 20 some different types of of sauces. They had all these different kinds of cheese. And then the toppings were just everything. As I'm standing there, I'm thinking, oh, my God, I'm gonna make a wrong decision. I'm really hungry. I don't want to make a mistake. Okay, Alfredo sauce sounds good. Maybe barbecue. Okay. I don't know. I get up there, what comes out of my mouth. I'll have a cheese pepperoni pizza, please. And the lady was just like, a cheese pepperoni pizza. And I said, I don't want buyer's remorse. I don't want to mess this up. I'm hungry. Right. The problem I see with that when I look back at retail is I remember offering my customers so many options that they got afraid they were going to make a mistake, and they just left. That same mom that was telling me that her whole mission was to be at the breakfast table when her kid came down for breakfast, and her kids say, man, mom, you look good today. That's the mom that's afraid of failing. That's the mom that's afraid of making a wrong decision to the point where she's not going to buy anything. Right. Because there's too many options. So if you're not selling through your inventory fast enough, potentially you're giving your customers too many options and they're just plain getting confused and overwhelmed. We already talked about the promotion versus sale. Alright. So basically this is a retail one. But some main takeaways here. Are you in this business to make money? I hope so. Don't apologize for that. Right. You want to be profitable. Your whole mission was not to sell items at a discount. It was to sell items for profit. And that's great. That's heck, I wish you all the best. That's what we're here to do. And the more of us need to have that mindset and not be so price driven and price conscious about, well, I think it's too much money for my customers. If you're saying it's too much money for your customers customers, that means you're not doing the right job to motivate and sell and educate and serve them. Right? Right. So selling a profit is the only way to win at this game. And I'm a big believer in life is a game. Right. And we're all here to win. And some days we come and we kill it. And some days we come and we don't. That is, that is just the reality. But when you get into retail and you start thinking about the hundreds of thousands of dollars you're investing in your inventory and the team you're bringing along the way. By the team, I don't just mean your, your co workers, your employees, I mean your family. I mean the people that you leave every day, the income that you bring in or you don't bring in. Right. I mean your entire team. You all need to be energized and invested and understand what is winning gonna mean to me? What is success? Right. How do I know if I'm winning? Oh, all right. That's what I said. So I guess in closing, the energy crisis I think is a real thing. And I don't want to be a Debbie Downer by saying that it really rests on our shoulders. But guys, we're the coach. If we choose to coach a team from the back room and just set them out on the court or out on the field and hope they do their very best they possibly can, we're setting them up to fail. If we don't take them along the journey and give them short term goals to know if we're winning or we're losing, we're setting them up to fail. And if our team fails, we fail. And we see a lot of stores closing, right? We see a lot of stores really killing it and rocking it and winning, right. But they're very active and they have hired people to do the things that suck their energy out so they are able to maintain and put their energy into something that they really do well at, and that is an income generating activity like customer service and sales. So my goal for you is to go back and really ask yourself, what am I doing that is sucking my energy out of me that keeps me from getting out there and doing what I do best, right. And generates these sales? What is it that I'm doing that I can look for another person, another partner, a service provider, somebody like that that can streamline things for me to get me back in the business of winning at this game? Because that's what I came to do. I wish you all the best.