ROLLING 12-MONTH SALES for June averaged $1.897 million, up 1% from the June 2018 result of $1.879.
Storewide sales for the 12-month period averaged 6,118 units per store, down 5.5% to 6,474. Average sale per item increased from $290 per item to $310, a rise of 6.9%.
With sales increasing $18,000, gross profit grew from $859,000 to $871,000, a rise of 1.37% on the back of markups, which improved from 84% to 85%. This again illustrates how even a slight increase in margin can have a significant effect on bottom-line profit.
We’ve spoken a lot through these results about the decline in units sold across store data, and this is most obvious when looking at the performance of silver sales. Our 12-month data through June shows average store sales of $99,000 for silver items, down from 2018’s figure of $113,000 (a 14% decline) and 2017’s figure of $136,000 (2019 result represents a drop of 27% from 2017). Unit sales match this decline with sales of silver items at 926 items, down from 1,210 in 2018 (a fall of 23.4%). The drop in units has been offset by a healthy increase in average sale of silver items, with the average increasing from $94 to $107 between 2018 and 2019 – a rise of 13.8%.
Based on this information, the typical store has seen silver’s contribution to overall sales decline from 7.7% to 5.2% in the last two years. How has silver been for your store? If silver sales have declined, has there been a trade-off in other areas? Clearly most stores have seen a rise in sales while silver has dropped, indicating that they are more than making up for it. Is this the case with your store? If silver has dropped but you haven’t made up for it elsewhere, its time to look at your store’s performance.
Inventory
Does your store still say silver? Have you continued to focus on an area that has become less profitable? Print an inventory by department list and determine what percentage of your store product is silver. Does it represent a greater percentage of your overall inventory than you are selling?
Silver will generally have a faster stockturn that most other items, so you should expect your percentage of inventory to be significantly lower than your percentage of sales in this area. If it’s not, you may be saying “silver” to your customers when you should be saying something else.
Marketing
What message are you sending your customers? Are you focused on the right type of product in your marketing? Are you still emphasizing cheaper silver product when the market wants something else?
Staff
Have your staff moved on from the bead market in what they are attempting to sell? Are they skilled up to sell higher-priced items? If the average sale in most stores has increased by 20% in the last two years, then your staff need to realize the performance goalpost has shifted for them, too. They need to be increasing their average sale to keep pace with the general trend – but they won’t know to do this if you don’t tell them. Print a salesperson performance report for your staff and compare it to a similar report from two years ago. Who has lifted their average sale? Who is still at the same level? Be prepared turn potential into profit to discuss this with them. They may not know what has been happening, and they cant change if you don’t tell them.