Hard-copy-group-5.docx

**The key to success in retail and wholesale business\ \ \ **Key to success in retail business: 1\. **Find the Source of Your Motivation** \- To be successful, a retailer must find their why. This why represents the reason the store exists, its mission and its vision. This is the first key element...

**The key to success in retail and wholesale business\ \ \ **Key to success in retail business: 1\. **Find the Source of Your Motivation** \- To be successful, a retailer must find their why. This why represents the reason the store exists, its mission and its vision. This is the first key element of the success of your retail store. The why guides everything you do (products, marketing, the employees you hire, company culture) and all your decisions. It informs the choice of what you sell and how you sell it. The why is the reason the store exists in the first place, the ultimate reason why you do everything you do. The why gives clarity, a goal and a priority axis. Successful stores use their why to develop communication campaigns that reach their target audience. **2. Care About Your Customers** \- One of the keys to success in retail is adopting a customer-centric approach. It is essential to know who your customers are, to understand their needs, their preferences and what they don't like. Collect their feedback and factor it into your decisions to improve your store and show your customers that you care. To show that you care about your customers, you must also provide exceptional customer service and build strong relationships with the customers. In the customer-centric approach, the retailer personalizes the shopping experience in every way possible. For example, on its website, it uses the data (purchase history, pages visited) that it has collected to suggest certain products to customers. **3. Have an Effective Marketing Strategy** \- To be successful, you inevitably need to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy that includes both online and offline tactics. You need to promote your store to first increase its notoriety, then to encourage people to buy. Targeted marketing campaigns are helpful in attracting and retaining customers. Marketing is key to the success of a store. Social media is a good way to interact with customers and find out what they need, what affects them, their preferences, what they don't like, etc. **4. Put Together a Fantastic Team** \- The team plays a determining role in the success (or failure) of the company. One of the keys to the success of a store is therefore to hire your employees very selectively. You have to choose the right people (which does not mean hiring only people with diplomas and 20 years of experience). Of course, these elements can contribute to the success of your store, but it is primarily about hiring individuals with the following qualities: motivation, resourcefulness, curiosity, willingness to learn, initiative, and interpersonal skills. These people must also work well as a team and have enthusiasm to spare. This way, you ensure that you hire people who will know how to sell your products to customers and provide customer service that will make customers want to come back and buy from your store. **5. Manage Inventory Efficiently** \- One of the keys to success is managing inventory efficiently. With experience, you will discover how to avoid surpluses and stock shortages as well as the ideal quantities to always have in stock. By managing inventory well, you will decrease storage costs, ensure that you always have enough products to meet demand and you will reduce the costs of dead stock. **6. Adopt an Omnichannel Strategy** \- In today's world, having a presence across multiple channels is essential. A store cannot succeed without having an easy-to-use e-commerce website. Consumers like to have a choice in how they shop. Of course, some people like to go to the store in person, for its atmosphere or to touch the product they want to buy. Others prefer to shop online, from the comfort of their home. For these people, it is essential to offer a fast, simple and quality delivery service to make them want to order from your store again in the future. **7. Do Not Neglect the Layout of the Store** \- The presentation and layout are what are seen first by customers. So, they must be impeccable and meticulous down to the smallest detail. Attractive displays are the first step to success. They help to attract the attention of customers first, then encourage them to buy. They showcase your brand and help create a memorable shopping experience. If customers remember your store, even just by the visuals, they are more likely to return. **8. Measure Your Performance and Analyze the Data** \- Measuring your performance in terms of sales, inventory or clicks on your website or ads helps you understand what is working and what is not. So you have the knowledge and skills to focus on what works and change what is hindering your success. For example, if you sell little of a product, you can find out quickly and take necessary action. Measuring performance is key to the success of a store. Feel free to regularly ask your customers and employees for feedback and ideas to improve the store. This will give you perspectives that you probably would never have thought of on your own. You can also gather data on customer preferences and needs to better address them. **9. Be Willing to Adapt** \- One of the most important keys to success in the world of retail business is to know how to adapt. Most of the large companies you know have experienced difficult times, but they have emerged stronger by adapting to market trends or new realities of the market and the world. So stay open to change and keep yourself informed of new trends in your industry and new technologies. Stay tuned for changes in the market. **10. Establish a Long-Term Plan** \- Having clear and achievable goals is a condition without which it is difficult to be successful. You have to know how to balance the short-term success goals and long-term success goals. Have a clear strategic plan to guide you. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to succeed without a plan to minimize unforeseen events and associated losses, to increase profits, to maximize notoriety, and to maintain a positive brand image with the public. Key to success in wholesale business: **1. Have a firm wholesale business plan** \- Business planning is a cornerstone of wholesale business management. A good business plan is a roadmap to the future of your business, telling the story of what the business will achieve, how it will achieve this and when. The three main reasons why your wholesale business should have a business plan is that it's a smart tool for developing effective growth strategies, helps you determine future financial needs, and attracts investors and lenders. **2.** **Establish your wholesale business pricing strategy** \- Selecting the right price in wholesale business management is about maintaining a balance between sales volumes and profitability. The goal is to cover costs and create a sense of value for customers -- and for you to stay competitive and ultimately profitable. Wholesale pricing is based on the principle of selling bigger volumes at a lower markup. Typically, a wholesale business will offer retail customers a 50% discount off their regular retail price, allowing them to offer competitive prices to their customers, while also maintaining a healthy profit margin. **3.** **Promote your wholesale brand** \- Wholesalers -- just as much as retailers and B2C organization -- need to create brand awareness, because how else will your customers find you or know your brand? Trade shows are a great way to promote your wholesale brand, because they're industry-specific and targeted to the people and businesses interested and involved in your sector. In other words, the attendees and exhibitors at trade shows are already interested in what your wholesale business provides. **4.** **Hire the right staff for your wholesaling business -- and invest in them** \- Hiring the right staff is important in any business, and this is certainly no different for wholesale businesses. To ensure you are recruiting the right people you should first identify your business goals and build your team around these. Consider your long-term business objectives and plan onboarding, skills training, and succession planning in advance. **5. Foster long-term relationships with stakeholders in your wholesale business** \- Stakeholders are those people that have a stake in your wholesale business. They can be customers, clients, staff, suppliers, or even board members -- all of which are important to you wholesale business. This means stakeholder relationship management is all about creating and maintaining mutually beneficial long-term relationships with all stakeholders -- but particularly with your customers, suppliers, and employees. **6. Maintain a healthy cashflow for your wholesale business** \- With inventory stock taking up a large percentage of a wholesaler's capital, managing cashflow is crucial for a wholesale business. Positive cashflow is necessary for the business to run smoothly, pay its bills, meet customer demand, and make informed decisions about business operations. **7. Manage your wholesale business warehouse efficiently** \- Efficient management of your warehouses improves workflow in your wholesale business by providing easy access to products and improving packing and order fulfilment rates -- which makes for quicker shipping and better overall productivity. Automated inventory management technology along with RFID readers and barcode systems help to eliminate mistakes and will help to expedite the time it takes for products to get from your warehouse to your customers. **8. Batch or serial track products your wholesale business distributes** \- Batch and serial tracking -- as the name suggests -- enables a wholesale business to trace batch lots, serial numbers, and expiry dates. It's particularly valuable for wholesale business management in the food & beverage industry, which often deals with perishable goods with short expiry dates and limited shelf life. **9. Set up B2B eCommerce for your wholesale business** \- Wholesaling businesses need to understand how eCommerce is creating new demands on their business, and how they can adapt to these. B2B eCommerce offers plenty of wholesale business advantages in terms of time- and money-saving potential. Automating as many processes, workflows, and tools as possible reduces the need for manual labor and minimizes costly errors. Setting up a B2B eCommerce channel for your wholesale business makes sense because bulk discounts are part-and-parcel in the wholesale industry. **10. Use inventory management software for wholesale** \- Fundamental to any wholesaling business is effective inventory control. Wholesalers generally hold significantly more stock than their retail customers and a large amount of investment and cashflow is tied up in that inventory stock. That means managing inventory well is crucial to the overall success of a wholesale business -- from storage to shipping to customer service and stakeholder management. **Determining the prices of a wholesale and retail product\ ** **What is Retail Pricing?** Retail pricing is the price that your customers pay for a single unit of your product. On the retailer's side, this price includes the original wholesale cost of the product plus a markup to cover operating expenses and profit. To find the sweet spot for maximum number of sales, remember the following four points: Know Your Costs The first step to setting a profitable price is knowing exactly what it costs to get your product to the market. This means calculating costs for production, distribution, and marketing needs. Understand Your Customer Base Know what your target audience is willing or able to pay for each product. Find time to study their needs, preferences, and shopping habits. This affects their perceived value of your product. Get to Know the Competition The retail industry is fairly cutthroat, so expect competition. View it positively, and see what similar products selling for. Their prices can serve as a benchmark for figuring out your own pricing. Make Time to Test and Revise Finding the right price usually doesn't happen overnight. It's not a set-it-and-forget-it process. Test different price points, see how your market responds. Markets can also change, so be ready to adjust as needed. Retail pricing also needs to cover things such as: Operating expenses Shipping and storage Necessary taxes Labor Cost and Management Profit Margins **What is Wholesale Pricing?** Wholesale pricing is the cost that manufacturers or distributors charge retailers or other business buyers for large quantities of goods. How to calculate wholesale price Now on to how you can calculate a wholesale price for your products. **1. Research your market** Before you set any product prices, determine your market segment and where you fit in. For example, are you a discount brand, a contemporary brand, or a designer brand? This also determines how your audience perceives you, which ultimately affects your pricing. If a lower price point is your competitive advantage, keep that in mind while doing your research. Be cognizant of your break-even point, and use the break-even point formula to calculate this number. If your target customers are more budget-conscious or looking for a high-quality, high-end product, consider these factors when conducting market research. **2. Calculate your production costs** Cost of goods manufactured (COGM) is the total cost of making or purchasing a product, including materials, labor, and any additional costs necessary to get the goods into inventory and ready to sell, like shipping and handling. A product's COGM can be determined with the following calculation: Total Material Cost + Total Labor Cost + Additional Costs and Overhead = Cost of Goods Manufactured **3. Set your profit margin** Your target profit margin will help you determine how to price your product objectively. If you're not sure how to do this, you can use Shopify's wholesale price calculator. Play around with the numbers to see different scenarios. **4. Consider additional costs** Not sure how to calculate your costs? You'll need to know your costs of goods sold (COGS) and your overhead costs. These costs include things like rent, customer acquisition costs (CAC), utilities, fees to run your online store. So while you might make \$2 profit per item, it might cost you more than \$2 in overhead to sell that item---in which case you'll need to adjust your wholesale pricing to make more profit. Here's how to add it up: Calculate your cost of goods sold. Calculate your overhead costs. Add the two costs together. Once you have those two numbers, combine them to create your cost price for the formula. **5. Use the wholesale pricing formula** When setting your wholesale price, first multiply your cost of goods by two. This will ensure your wholesale profit margin is at least 50%. Profit margin is the gross profit a retailer earns when an item is sold. Apparel retail brands typically aim for a 30% to 50% wholesale profit margin, while direct-to-consumer retailers aim for a profit margin of 55% to 65%. (A margin is sometimes also referred to as "markup percentage.") **Focus on making sure that what you do charge can cover the following costs:** Raw materials Production labor Overhead costs A reasonable profit margin **Wholesale Vs Retail Price Differences** The main difference between wholesale and retail prices is the number of products purchased, and the markup added by retailers.