Retail buyer and founder of consultancy Style Retailer, Lauren Jones, has worked with big names including David Jones, General Pants and Glue Store during her 10 year career. She shared her knowledge on ‘the art of good buying’ at the Home & Giving Sydney fair recently. Here’s what we learned.
It’s not all about you
Although it’s tempting to go with your personal taste, Jones says that buying is about being led by your customers, not dictating to them. You need to understand your customers so you can offer them the things they want and need from you.
Profiling should be a priority
Jones recommends finding out why your customers come into your store, how much they spend, where they currently shop (aka your competitors), age, what motivates them to buy, who/what influences their style, and what their focus is in life (study, family, career etc.).
Engaging with your customers on the shop floor is a good way to gather this info, and sales data is also extremely important.
Know your strengths
Jones suggests creating a mood board of your bestsellers, which will help you see consistencies in price, colour or trends. She also recommends doing this with your worst sellers, to hopefully spot the differences between the two.
The 5 rights
Once you have an idea of your target audience—and remember you can’t be everything to everyone—you should consider the five rights before buying any product.
1. Product: From your profiling you should have an idea of what your customers want.
2. Price: How much is your customer willing to pay in your store? Jones says that if you see a product you’d like to stock, you should always estimate the RRP your customer would be willing to pay before even looking at the wholesale cost.
3. Timing: Take into account seasonal events that will dictate your assortment. For example, would your customers appreciate a larger stationery selection at back to school time? Build an events calendar so you know what products you’ll need when, and don’t forget any events in your local area that might have an impact on sales.
4. Quantities: Before ordering, you should work out which products will be part of your core assortment (or a volume buy), and which will be a highlight buy you want to sell out of quickly. You should also check your total assortment and make sure the quantities make sense.
5. Location: Jones says there is an opportunity for smaller, independent stores to cater to their local market where larger retailers might not be able to. Who do you capture in your location? Uni students looking for on trend laptop cases or professionals searching for high end bags?
Divide and conquer
You should divide the products you want to stock into three categories: your core, seasonal, and highlight/trend buys.
If a core item doesn’t sell as well as you’d hoped, you should be able to carry it through to the next season without it looking dated, whereas seasonal pieces are essential for keeping your assortment fresh but lose desirability quickly.
A highlight buy is a tester; you could trial a new product category or experiment with a trend. Because of the small order, if a highlight buy fails it shouldn’t have a huge impact on your overall performance.
Trends
You don’t need to get on board every trend train that comes around—buying is all about editing for your customer—but they can be a useful way to update your assortment, for example by offering a core product in a new ‘on trend’ colour.
Creating a seasonal mood board of product you would like to stock will show you how everything will merchandise in store.
Range review
Use product images to review your entire range and see what customers will be seeing at any time in your store. Then review this using the five rights. You want consistency in product and pricing but be careful not to waste your money on products that are doing the same job.
By reviewing your range, you can spot things that shouldn’t be there and edit them out before ordering.
Trade your range
Once product arrives in store you need to monitor it and ensure it’s selling to forecast. Any underperformance should be assessed against the five rights and if a product does better than expected you should work out why.
By Ruth Cooper
