WHILE MANY LARGE and small jewelry retailers have over the years made buying decisions based on their own personal likes or personal relationship with key vendors, I highly recommend you stop shooting in the dark and start making data-driven decisions. Utilizing data will enable your business to generate revenue, increase the turn of products, predict future trends, create new business opportunities, and produce actionable insights.
You may now be asking yourself where do I even start to know what data to look at, how can I ensure I am entering the data properly, what data do I need to enter, and what type of reports should I be running based on this data?
If you want to start today making better-educated data driven buying decisions, I suggest considering the two main points listed below.
1. The data entered needs to be accurate and consistent.
Be sure to designate a select few people to receive inventory and enter the data properly. Setting specific guidelines per product category is key to making sure these select people know what exact data is needed when entering it into your POS system. For example, when entering a loose diamond outside of common data like the price the following data needs to be entered: carat weight, color, clarity, certificate number, level of fluorescence, and the plot of the diamond. Having this specific data in the system for the loose diamonds will help sales associates choose what diamond they will pull prior to going to the safe, for multi-store retailers, this will give sales associates an idea of what diamonds are available in all stores in order to do an inner store transfer, and for the buyer, this will allow them to run sell through reports to know what sells the best prior to going into a buying meeting with a loose supplier.
2. Be sure to have the proper dropdowns available to choose from when entering the data to ensure for a versatile report to be generated specific to a key feature of the product.
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For example, if you are entering an engagement ring into inventory consider having the following drop downs available in the POS system: Semi-mount (meaning an engagement ring set with a CZ center) or Live (meaning an engagement ring set with a live natural center diamond), center diamond shape, halo shape, If live note the breakdown of cost for the semi-mount and the diamond, metal type, and center stone details such as color, clarity, and certificate number. Having these dropdowns will now enable you to generate reports like what your best-selling center stone engagement ring is, what your best-selling halo shape is, or in live rings what is your average selling price.
This way when you sit down with a vendor, you’re making better buying decisions based on what you know specifically has had a good sell-through in your store.
These are two great starting points to ensuring a stable backbone for your business and assist you to now make better buying decisions which will translate into a healthier better turning set of inventory.
