What is your most important metric in retail? I like GMROI as the most useful and revealing, but it has one drawback in that there aren’t many benchmarks available to be use Its ugly sister metric, stockturn, is simpler but still extremely useful – and importantly it goes to the heart of retailing. (Breaking bulk to tailor product/quantity to the needs of the consumer.) Understanding the stockturn of a product/category is extremely useful, yet so few small retailers actually do the ho
e homework necessary to have access to this metric. (Services and hospitality would have equivalent metrics that go by different labels, but the same principle applies.)
Most retailers will understand that a stockturn metric reveals that your inventory levels are wrong or that your sales rate is wrong.
But there are two features or principles of stockturn that even very experienced retailers don’t always appreciate.
#1: The ideal/optimum ‘stockturn’ for a category is (for practical purposes and in most cases) fixed.
That is, the optimum stockturn for any category is a given. This applies for every category or product. This rate is determined by (a) the retailers’ business models and (b) by how consumers purchase certain products.
This means two things:
You should know the rate of turn and you must compare it to the benchmark.
The relationship between your sales and your inventory is (relatively) fixed; therefore the amount of stock you have determines the level of sales you can achieve. (Read that again.)
#2: With ‘stockturn’ there is an optimum range.
With metrics like sales or profit, there is never a case of having too much. But consider these examples.
The stockturn for a daily newspaper is 365 times per annum. Any more than that would indicate inefficient double handling and any less would mean you probably overstock.
Fashion has a stockturn of four times per year – for the obvious reason that the purchase cycle is driven by the seasons.
The Christmas tree farm sells its stock once a year.
Let’s consider fashion again.
Good planning and good systems will allow efficient retailers to make mid-season corrections on their stock and instead of turning stock once per season, they may be able to do a mid-season clearance of the duds and stock up on the best sellers. They may turn their stock 1.5 times per season, resulting in a turn of six times per annum.
Inefficient retailers (like department stores) who also sell fashion traditionally achieve stockturns of less than four times per season in their fashion category.
The vast majority of (specialty) fashion retailers will sit in the 3.5 to 6.5 range (see principle #1 above) because that is how people buy clothes. (There are fast fashion retailers who have a different business model. For instance, Zara is vertically integrated and goes from runway to store in a few weeks. It achieves stockturns of 17 times per annum, but it is not really in the fashion business, it is in the disposable clothing business.
And according to principle #2 above, there is an optimum range for this metric. Just like your heartbeat can’t be in the 1-25 bpm range, nor can it sustain 200+bpm. To work best it needs to be in the 60-80 range.
That is just for a human being. Canaries’ hearts flutter at 1000 bpm, ducks at 190, and horses at 38. (Yes, there is an apparent mass/ rate inversion – just like the boutique and the department store.)
How to interpret and use stockturn metric:
If the canary is a canary = just right
Assume you sell a product that has an optimum stockturn of eight – and your average inventory is valued at $200,000 at retail. The best you can hope for is $1.6 million in sales. No matter how much marketing you do, or how much you improve your service, your sales destiny is determined by the amount of stock you carry.
The worst thing you can do if you are turning your stock in the optimum range, is to discount your stock. Your rate of turn will spike slightly, but it won’t go up over an extended period (the whole year) because discounting will bring tomorrow’s sales forward to today – and on average the turn will stay the same. In fact the net effect is you will make less GP over the term because your discount is the margin you give away.
You should evaluate whether $1.6 million is sufficient turnover for your business. None of the traditional, retail tactics like sales/service/display etc are going to change the business fundamentally. The only way to grow a business that is already tuned for an optimal stockturn, is to make strategic structural changes that will increase your market share. E.g. buying out a competitor or implementing strategies that are directly aimed at taking business from someone else.
If the canary acts like a horse = too slow
If you are overstocked, with a sub-optimum stockturn, you should discount the product to recycle the cash into new product that will sell. That is, if people aren’t buying canaries, then you should sell ducks. Or horses. But remember that different products/categories are different yet again.
A low stockturn indicates that you have made a mistake: you bought too much or you bought stuff that doesn’t sell. Discounting is only an appropriate tactic to rectify these mistakes – and should not be used in any other way.
If your horse is a canary = too fast
You are probably under capitalised and paying the price of ordering small quantities (with no volume discounts) and double handling. The only way to slow down your turn is to increase your stock levels.
Keep increasing it until you hit benchmark and you will see your sales rise.
In summary:
The amount of stock you carry determines your sales potential.
If your stockturn is ‘on benchmark’, adding more stock or running a price promotion will have a negative effect.
Knowing your stockturn eliminates certain strategies and opens up others as the logical options.
Buying stock accounts for 70 per cent to 40 per cent of your total expenses of running the business – it is vital to get that right. If you don’t know your stockturn, I’d argue that you are not practising retail, you are simply hoping for the best.
Dennis
Ganador: Learning & Development for the 21st century retailer dealing with the 21st century consumer.