WHEN THE PANDEMIC hit the sales reps of brands and manufacturers had to make a 360 pivot to determine how they were going to sell to retailers as well as learning how to become more of an advising consultant rather than a typical sales rep going door to door and just selling. To be this advising consultant and produce data-driven inventory recommendations they needed access to data and accurate data at that. The top four common reoccurring issues I see within manufacturers data have been the following:
- There is a lack of data such as missing data per SKU.
- There are mistakes and inconsistencies within the data such as the descriptions not matching what the actual piece of jewelry is.
- Product is not allocated in proper down menus to run reports based on the specific types of pieces or collections.
- There is a lack of having a formula in place for descriptions to be consistent as well as having an additional set of descriptions made to provide the retailer for website and SEO purposes.
You may now be asking yourself why are all these points important, how will having this data correct and consistent help increase sales, and how will this help my sales team/retail partners?
Below I have listed just three of my top reasons how having this data will help drive sales and make for a healthier inventory consistently turning for both sides of the partnership being the retailer and manufacturer.
- If your product is allocated in proper dropdowns and collections your sales team can then be fully prepared to present to their retail accounts a highly educated presentation showcasing the retailers top performing categories, % of sales per category, and be able to recommend styles based on past sell-through. A few essential drop-down menu examples could be bridal vs fashion, center stone shape, halo shape, metal content, finger size, and live (meaning natural diamond set in the center) or semi mount (meaning set with a CZ center.) This data is not only great to provide existing retailers, but also new potential customers like to see this data to understand what the company is selling companywide to determine what will be the best selling SKUs to start with.
- When product is purchased from a manufacturer, retailers will find on the invoice and on the tag a shorted description of the piece of jewelry such as 14KW .32ctw semi mount. To a consumer they do not know this lingo or what this description means. This is why I am advising you to provide your retailers a lengthier detailed description of the pieces of jewelry purchased to allow the retailer to utilize this when putting merchandise on there website and for SEO purposes.
- Having accurate and consistent data will allow your internal merchandising and design team to make educated data-driven decisions from a styling perspective when making new products based on past sell-through. For example, they could run a report for engagement rings seeing what shape halo works the best so when developing new engagement rings, they possibly will produce more of one halo shape than others knowing it has had a better sell through in the past.