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Laurie Owen: Gross Margin Target

Stats to know for your store.

Published

19 years ago

March 1, 2006

David Squires Instore March 2006 Issue

51.5

What is it? Gross margin is the portion left of each sales dollar after you pay for merchandise sold, direct labor for craftsmen and repair people, as well as freight in and freight out. When stated in dollars, it’s known as gross profit. For the “high profit” group in our 2004 Jewelers Financial Benchmarking Study, the average gross margin was 51.5%. The rest of the companies only took home 47.2% of each sales dollar. For a $2.5 million dollar company, every 1% more in gross margin means $25,000 straight to the bottom line – assuming, of course, that they keep all other costs in line.

Strategy: The trick? Buy better, price better, lose less merchandise to five-finger discounts, and sell more of before it goes out of style. Simple? Yep. Easy? No. Know your target gross margin, and track it overall and by depart-ment all year long.

This story is from the March 2006 edition of INSTORE.

Looking for a Seamless Sale? Call Wilkerson

After almost 60 years in business, Breakiron Jewelers in Erie, Pennsylvania, was closing its doors. And the store’s owner, Linda Breakiron, was ready for it. She had run the store as its sole owner since the beginning of the millennium and was looking forward to a change. Of course, she called Wilkerson. Breakiron talked to other jewelers who had used Wilkerson and was satisfied with their response. “They always had positive feedback,” she recalls. With the sales, marketing and even additional inventory that Wilkerson provided, Breakiron insists she could never have accomplished her going-out-of-business sale without Wilkerson’s help. She’s now ready for the journey ahead, but looking back, she’d be sure to recommend Wilkerson. “They just made the whole process very seamless.”