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David Brown

4 Oft-Overlooked Expenses Where You Could Save Money

Check these areas to see if you can drop more to the bottom line.

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BUSINESS EXPENSES ARE a little like bamboo: They tend to grow naturally without much input or encouragement and in a manner that can quickly get out of control!

Much like bamboo, regular maintenance is necessary to ensure they don’t completely overtake your garden of profitability, rearing their ugly head in places where they simply aren’t required. This time of year, following your financial year end, is one of the best times to review many of your financial outlays. I recommend a copy of your financial statements, your ledger, a highlighter, and a decent period of uninterrupted time.

First, take an overview of your expenses per your financial statements compared to last year. Where have costs increased markedly? These require further investigation to ensure they don’t become permanent increases that aren’t necessary.

Your ledger is your best way to review expenses line by line. According to the 80/20 rule, most of your costs will be tied up in product purchase, staff wages, rent and marketing, and these areas will deserve special attention — but other areas can soon blow out also and are worth the time and effort. They include:

Subscriptions. What have you subscribed to that you are no longer using? I had a client who was paying separately for Microsoft 365, Dropbox, and Google — all services that were capable of doing the same job. A tidy up and elimination saw him reducing his expenses in this area by over $400.

Credit cards. Do you have multiple cards with multiple fees, many of which you don’t use? Some have generous travel insurance options worth the annual fee. However, COVID has rendered many of these policies useless and not worth paying the premium. Again, a review of your cards may reveal several hundred dollars in fee savings that can stay in your back pocket.

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Payment terms. With product being one of your biggest outlays, it pays to look at the benefits of prompt payment. Some attractive terms for early payment can be well worth the outlay, providing thousands of dollars a year in savings.

Advertising. Local media, such as newspaper, radio and television are now being outsold by online platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook. If you’re currently locked into a media contract, it may be time to renegotiate whether you are getting good value for your money. Online marketing can often reach these people for a fraction of the cost, and most local media are willing to offer much better rates to stay competitive with them. This is to your advantage.

David Brown is the president of Edge Retail Academy, a leading jewelry business consulting and data aggregation firm that provides expert business improvement plans to help with all facets of your business, including improved financials, healthier inventory, sales growth, increased staff performance, recruiting and retirement/succession planning, all custom-tailored to your store’s needs. They offer Edge Pulse to better understand critical sales and inventory data, to improve business profitability, benchmark your store against 1,200-plus other Edge Users, and ensure you stay on top of market trends with their $3 billion-plus of industry sales data. Contact (877) 569.8657, ext. 001, [email protected] or EdgeRetailAcademy.com.

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Time to Do What You've Always Wanted? Time to Call Wilkerson.

It was time. Teri Allen and her brother, Nick Pavlich, Jr., had been at the helm of Dearborn Jewelers of Plymouth in Plymouth, Mich., for decades. Their father, Nick Pavlich, Sr., had founded the store in 1950, but after so many wonderful years helping families around Michigan celebrate their most important moments, it was time to get some “moments” of their own. Teri says Wilkerson was the logical choice to run their retirement sale. “They’re the only company that specializes in closing jewelry stores,” she says. During the sale, Teri says a highlight was seeing so many generations of customers who wanted to buy “that one last piece of jewelry from us.” Would she recommend Wilkerson? Absolutely. “There is no way that I would have been able to do this by myself.”

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