Author: Phil Wrzesinski

Phil Wrzesinski is the National Sales Manager of HABA USA toy company, a Former Top-Level, Award-Winning Retailer, a Thought-Provoking Speaker, a Prolific Author, a 10-Handicap Golfer, an Entertaining Singer/Songwriter, and a Klutz Kid who enjoys anything to do with the water (including drinking it fermented with hops and barley), anything to do with helping local independent businesses thrive, and anything that puts a smile on peoples' faces.

January 9, 2019

The Thirty Questions to Find Your “Silver Bullet”

I got suckered in once. Long before the phrase “fake news” came into existence, back in the days when Norton and MacAfee were the only names in anti-virus protection, my computer started slowing down.

Then up popped an ad for a free diagnostic test of my computer, guaranteed to clean it up and take it to speeds the factory settings never could. I downloaded it and immediately all these warnings came flashing on the screen telling me I was infected and needed to download this fancy, official-sounding fix right away before I lost critical data.

Yeah, you can probably guess the rest.

I took the computer to a local shop who cleaned several viruses and Trojans off the hard drive and got me back to my normal, plodding, limited-by-my-service-provider-not-my-computer speeds.

We’re all looking for that quick-fix, aren’t we? That guaranteed, take-you-to-the-next-level tool that will transform your business? That’s why scams like that computer virus one worked so well. We all keep thinking there is that one silver bullet we’re missing that will make all our ills go away.

Here is where I’m supposed to tell you there isn’t a silver bullet. Eat less and exercise more, right?

The truth is there is a silver bullet. And a bronze one. And a gold one. And a titanium-plated, platinum-infused, diamond-encrusted, gold-leafed, emerald-cut, space-aged aluminum, time-released-capsule one.

The problem is that every business needs a different bullet. In retail there is no one-size-fits-all bullet.

You might be struggling with cash flow while your neighbor down the street needs help with a better marketing message. The store on the next block has a customer service problem, while the store across the street is in a market with too many competitors.

What retailers really need is a good diagnostic tool to help you identify the true problem(s). Unfortunately your business isn’t like an automobile where you can plug it in and see what’s wrong.

You can hire a consultant, but unless they have a background in understanding independent retail, they might not be able to diagnose your true problem either. You can try to do it yourself (I gave you a few Measuring Cups to use in an earlier post), but it is often hard to read the label from inside the bottle.

Since I am the DIY guy of retail, though, I want to show you the approach I would take to diagnose where your business needs work so that maybe you can find the demon holding you back. If you were to hire me, I would look at your business in this order …

Core Values – Is your business aligned with your Values? If not, how and where can we change things?
Market Potential – Where do you stand in your market? Who are your competitors? What is your share of the market? Is it shrinking or growing? What local factors influence your market presence?
Customer Service – How much of your business is Repeat and Referral? How much training do your front line people have? What skills do they have? How well do they greet, meet, and interact with customers? How are their “closing” skills? What services do you provide? Do your services lean customer-friendly or business-friendly? Do you meet and exceed expectations?
Inventory Management – How is your cash flow? What is your Profit Margin, Turn Ratio, Accounts-Payable-to-Inventory Ratio, Cash-to-Current Ratio, etc? What are the “must-haves” and how was your stock position on those items last year? Where is the fat that needs to be trimmed from the inventory? What systems do you use to keep from over-buying?
Marketing & Advertising – What is your Marketing Message? Is it consistent across all platforms (including the in-store experience)? How can we make that message more powerful and effective? Where are you spending your marketing money? Are there cheaper, better alternatives for reaching the people you want to reach? Are there collaborations that make sense? Are you harnessing all the free publicity available to you?

Notice the order of things. Most businesses come to me saying they need help with their Marketing because they aren’t getting the traffic they want. Yet sometimes the problem is their business isn’t aligned with their values so they aren’t attracting the right types of customers. sometimes the problem is there aren’t enough customers in their market to sustain their business. Sometimes the problem is their service is so bad, those who do visit are telling friends to stay away.

Better Marketing won’t fix those other problems or help the business.

If you want to run your own diagnostics, there are several hyperlinks to articles and blogs related to the thirty questions posed above.

If you want to hire me to run your diagnostics, I’m going through that list in that order until we find the first problem.

There is no single silver bullet to fix any and all retailers, but there is a bullet to slay the specific demon holding you back. I encourage you to run your diagnostics on your own to see if you can isolate your problem. When you do find it, send me an email and I’ll help you brainstorm several solutions to solve your problem on your own or with help.

There is a bullet for you, but it’s buried in the haystack next to the needle.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I hired a consultant once. He compared my Turn Ratio to Walmart’s and told me my problem was inventory control and that I needed to go to “just-in-time” inventory where I had at most a one-week supply of inventory on hand. My dad hired a consultant. He compared our prices to Kmart and Toys R Us and said our prices were too high and then pitched a total revamp of our sales floor into a circus theme (not sure what that had to do with prices). If you’re going to hire someone, make sure they have extensive experience working with indie retailers. Make sure they have a list like this one, too, that spells out what they’re going to evaluate.

PPS Sorry for the mixed metaphor at the end. It sounded good in my head.

January 8, 2019

How Your Core Values Influence Your Work

For a short period of time I was between bookkeepers. The job fell on my shoulders for a few months. While this was a godsend in one way because it helped me better understand the job and the skills necessary to do the job well, it also frustrated me because one of the most important tasks was filing papers. I hate filing papers.

I would have a small stack of papers, a nice, neat, organized set of file drawers, and folders already labeled and waiting, yet I couldn’t muster the energy to spend the ten or fifteen minutes to put those papers away.

Mock me all you want (those papers did) but it just wasn’t something I liked to do. My desk at Toy House was almost always a mess of piles.

That’s me attempting to clean my desk once again! (Yes, that’s my Core Values Character Diamond in the background)

I’m still that way. My keyboard is surrounded by piles of papers that just need to be put away. My mouse has the barest minimum of space to work. No one would look at my office here at home or at the store and accuse me of being a neat-freak.

Yet when I was out on the floor I was constantly straightening products on shelves, cleaning up messes, and rearranging merchandise to keep it organized and pleasing to the eye. I detested a messy store and worked long hours to keep it clean and neat.

Why the Jekyll and Hyde?

The office was for me. The sales floor was for my customers.

As you remember, one of my Core Values is Helping Others. Keeping a clean and organized office helps me. Keeping a clean and organized sales floor helps my customers. When you look at it through that prism, you can see why the former was so difficult and the latter was so easy.

This is just one of the many reasons why knowing your Core Values is so important. It helps you understand the decisions you make. It helps you understand why you put your priorities in a certain order.

As you’re evaluating the previous year and plotting your course for 2019, I encourage you to evaluate last year’s results through the prism of your Core Values. See just how much influence those values have on your everyday existence. You’ll be surprised to see how much of your pain was from when your business and your values were at odds and how much of your joy was when they were aligned.

When you begin to see it, you realize you have the power to harness your Values to bring you more joy.

I hired a bookkeeper to do the stuff that helps me and spent my time doing the stuff that helps others.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Sometimes you have to do the painful stuff yourself. I wrote about how to muscle through that here. Sometimes you need to hire someone to do the things you don’t like to do, don’t want to do, or don’t have the talent to do. I wrote about how to find those people here.

PPS If you aren’t sure of your Core Values, here is a worksheet I use to help people identify them. You’ll know it is a true value of yours when you see it in your business, too.

January 7, 2019

When Do You Become an Expert?

Back in December I published my thousandth blog post. Each post takes about an hour and a half to compose on average, so I’ve dedicated about 1,500 hours to blogging. According to Malcom Gladwell’s “10,000-Hour Rule” in his book OUTLIERS I’m 15% of the way there to being an Expert blogger.

I spent twenty-three plus years working full time retail at the management level. Assuming 2500 hours/year (50/week), I have 58,750 hours of experience working retail. Believe it or not, but that still doesn’t necessarily make me an Expert on retail.

One of the reasons is that the 10,000-Hour Rule requires you to “practice the right way” for those 10,000 hours. Just having years of experience in retail doesn’t mean you’re any good at it or getting better at it—especially if you aren’t practicing it the right way.

It is the continual practice that Gladwell believes is the key. Continual practice, however, is severely lacking for most retail employees.

Just because you trained them back when you hired them does not turn your staff into rock stars.

Experience is only valuable if you are also Learning and Evaluating while Experiencing.

Famed scientist Niels Bohr had his own take on how to become an Expert … “An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”

That is awfully hard to do, so as John Luther said … “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”

According to Bohr and Luther, you have to fail and learn from your failures (or at least learn from everyone else’s).

Here is my own recipe for becoming an Expert:

Learn
Do
Evaluate
Repeat

Follow those steps over and over. Learn, Do, and Evaluate. The third step is the trickiest because it requires brutal honesty to really be able to Learn more. Yet it is also the most vital because because your future Learning requires proper Evaluation.

Sometimes that Evaluation leads you to the conclusion, “I need to Learn from someone else.”

That’s what happened to me in 1996 when I took over the hiring and training for our staff. I started reading all the books I could find on hiring. When those didn’t match my own evaluations, I wrote my own book.

It happened to me again in 2005 and led me to take classes on Advertising and Branding from Wizard Academy where I learned whole new tools for measuring my business, many of which I share in this blog.

It happened to me once more in 2012 when the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association asked me to write a book about the Financials of a typical toy store. I spoke with several accountants until I felt comfortable enough to translate accountant-speak into retail-speak.

It happened to me in 2013 after having already written three hundred blog posts and knowing I still needed to learn more, so I hired a writing coach to help me understand and write more clearly for my audience.

When do you become an Expert? I think the real answer is … When you’re smarter than most of the other people in your field.

How do you get smarter than most of the other people in your field? When you Learn, Do, Evaluate, and Repeat.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS The idea for today’s post came late last night. I was thinking how much I would rather write about “winners” this year than write about the mistakes others have made. Those posts are more fun. Those quotes, however, reminded me that learning from our own mistakes and the mistakes of others is our best path to becoming better ourselves. Hopefully I’ll still have plenty of winners to highlight this year. Please send me stories of the retailers and small businesses doing it right in your area. We can learn from them, too. Please forgive me if there are a lot of posts about businesses doing it wrong. My hope is to save you from being one of them.

PPS If you feel stuck in your Marketing & Advertising, Hiring & Training, Customer Service, or Inventory Management, let me know. If I can’t be the resource you need to get to the next level of Learning, I often know the right direction to point you to find that resource.

January 3, 2019

The Right Measuring Cups

When the recipe calls for 1 cup Vegetable Oil do you reach for a teaspoon? When it says 16 ounces Sour Cream do you grab a scale? Of course not. Sure, you can get close with those tools, but it won’t be as accurate nor as handy.

Yet we do that in retail all the time. We use the wrong tools to measure our business.

For instance, most businesses look at Sales Growth as a barometer of their business health. If sales went up, business is good. If sales went down, business is bad.

The problem with that tool is that it doesn’t take into account what happened in your local marketplace. If your sales went up 5% but your market grew by 10%, then your business is not on the right path. If your sales were down 2% but your market shrunk by 5%, you captured a larger share of your market.

You have to know how to calculate Market Share to truly know the health of your business.

RECIPE FOR MARKET SHARE

Market Share: your percentage of the Market Potential for your trade area. Calculate Market Potential by finding the Annual Sales for your entire industry, divide that by the population of the United States and multiply that answer times your own trade area population. Then adjust for income levels. The math looks like this …

Industry Sales = $20.2 billion
US Population = 325 million people
Your Trade Area = 150,000 people
US Average Household Income = $59,039
Your Area Household Income = $63,026 (6.75% higher than US average)

$20.2 billion / 325 million = $62.15/person

$62.15 x 150,000 = $9.3 million

$9.3 million x 1.0675 = $9.9 million Market Potential

(Note: that number can be adjusted again for one other factor dependent on your industry. For instance, if you’re in the toy industry you can adjust for the number of children in your area compared to the national average. If you’re in the boat industry, look for something along the lines of percentage of boat owners nationally and in your area.)

Figure out your percentage or share of that market and whether it is growing or shrinking. That will be a more accurate measurement than your top line sales.

CUSTOMER SERVICE MEASUREMENT

How do you measure something as abstract as Customer Service? One tool is Units Per Transaction (UPT). While several factors can influence this number including your merchandising skill of impulse items and whether the items you’re selling have more or less accessories than last year, the largest influence on this number is your sales force. Are they taking care of the customer properly? Are they completing the sale? Are they making the customer feel welcome, comfortable, and happy? Are they building trust?

The calculation for UPT is simple. Take the total units sold during the year and divide that by the number of transactions.

75,000 units sold / 22,000 transactions = 3.4 Units Per Transaction

If that number is going up, your team is doing their job.

Another measuring tool that is slightly harder to quantify, but equally effective in telling the true tale of your customer service is Repeat and Referral Business.

Repeat Business is a sign of Good Customer Service. Referral Business is a sign of WOW Customer Service. Your service was so good they had to bring their friends back with them. If you’re tracking transactions by name in your POS, you’ll know your Repeat Business. You can also ask when you enter someone new into your POS how they heard of you. If they say “from a friend” mark them as Referral.

The ideal business has a majority of their customers as Repeat and Referral. The raw number of Repeat and Referral Customers should hopefully be growing and should be a larger percentage of your traffic. The larger, the better.

MARKETING AND ADVERTISING MEASUREMENT

Sure, you can run a coupon or a Call to Action in every ad to see how many people it drives to the store. But if you have been reading this blog or following the wisdom of people smarter than me like Roy H. Williams or Seth Godin, then you know that kind of advertisement leads to short term gain and long term pain.

One other way to measure the effectiveness of your advertising is from your Repeat and Referral Business. Add those two numbers together. The remainder of your traffic is your marketing-driven business.

Yes, some of that traffic is based purely on your location. Your location is part of your marketing. Your signs on your building are part of your marketing. Your parking situation is part of your marketing. Your advertising is also part of your marketing. If the raw numbers of people coming through your doors for the first time and not by Referral are growing, your marketing is working.

Which part of your marketing is working? That is a little bit harder to measure. As famed retailer John Wanamaker said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

At least you have a tool to see if it is working in general. (Check the Free Resources for Making Your Ads More Effective to figure out how to make all halves work.)

When you use the right measuring tool, you get a better result. That’s true for cooks, bakers, and small business owners.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Before you plan for 2019, you really need to know what happened in 2018. Even if your top line sales rocked the world and your bank account is fatter than usual, if your Market Share decreased or your Repeat and Referral Business fell off, you have important issues you need to address sooner rather than later. I’d love to help you address those issues.

January 2, 2019

Looking Back at the “Top” Ten Blog Posts From 2018

Somewhere around the first of the year a lot of writers like to publish their “Top Ten” list of most viewed posts from the previous year. Wouldn’t it be smarter to post the least-viewed posts, the ones most people missed? Give people a second-chance to read your wisdom. As it is, just because a post is the most-viewed doesn’t make it the best.

This year I’m going to give you a variety pack of posts from 2018 and why you should read them (again).

The post you didn’t miss: Yes, I have Heard About Toys R Us. This was the post with the most views last year. I made a prediction in the PS of that post that has turned out to be right. Go read the post to see what I predicted.

The post you missed: Few Things Go as Planned. This was the post with the fewest views. I wrote this at the beginning of the year to remind you to plan, but to also understand that things don’t always work out the way you plan them and that you have to be able to adjust on the fly. Ask yourself, “Did 2018 happen the way you planned?” I’m betting right now your answer is No. Go read this post.

The milestone you didn’t know about: Christmas Quick Tip #3 – Sign ‘Em Up Before Checkout. This was post #1000. To some people, those numbers are kinda cool. I didn’t make a big deal about it then because it was the busy holiday season and those posts were designed to be short and sweet. by the way, this isn’t just a Christmas time tip. It is a smart business practice.

My favorite post of 2018: Five Proven Recipes. In this post I give you Paul Harvey’s recipe for a backyard mosquito spray, an all-natural weed-killer that works (if you spray regularly), and simple, tech-free recipes for raising the bar on your Hiring, Advertising, and Customer Service. Sometimes the simple ways are the best.

The post that got the most social media interest: So You Got a Bad Review? This post had the most comments on social media and was the first post of mine that was “shared” on LinkedIn (a new feature they’ve added). Best of all, it had no negative reviews, lol. If you’ve had a negative review, you might want to read this.

The best question you will ask your staff all year: How to Learn From the Best. This was actually the second least viewed post, yet the most telling about where you stand in your local retail marketplace and what you need to work on the most. Ask your staff this question and listen to their replies.

The post I wished you had commented on: This “Free” is Really Free. The site stats counter tells me I get hundreds of downloads of the different Free Resources each year. I’d love to know how you’re using them and what success you might be seeing because of them. Go ahead and leave some comments there (or here).

That’s your lucky seven posts you should have read (and hopefully did). I’m going to leave three more links in the PS below for the adventurous souls among you to round out the “Top Ten”.

Happy New Year!

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I triple dog dare you …

How to Use Humor in Your Advertising the Right Way

Quit Making it So Hard for People to Buy From You

“Customer Service” is Dead

December 28, 2018

The Downside Builds Trust

I’ve been using a new auto shop for repairs for my vehicle. I met the owner a few months ago, liked him, and gave him some work. I was happy with the work and the price, so naturally, I called to get a quote on some new work.

My buddy wasn’t in, but I got his main front desk guy and told him what I needed. He said he would have to check it out and get back to me. Then he said something that totally blew my mind.

He said, “I am really bad at remembering to call people back and I don’t have a good reminder system here. If you haven’t heard from me by 11am tomorrow, call me.”

Now my first reaction could have been, “Are you kidding me? Between Google Alerts, Smart Phone Apps, and Post-It Notes, how could a business person be so bad at doing one of his primary jobs?”

Surprisingly, it wasn’t. Instead my brain went to all the times I called a place and they never called me back. This guy warned me that him forgetting to call me back was a possibility and even gave me the deadline by which I would know to call him back.

It was refreshing.

Sure, Great Customer Service dictates that you always call a customer back at the soonest possible time. You never forget. Great Customer Service also dictates telling the customer the deadline by which you will be calling back. In this case, by 11am tomorrow.

Here is why what he did was the next best thing to “never forgetting.”

First, he recognized one of his flaws and wasn’t afraid to tell me about it. It takes guts to do that. It also builds trust when you admit what you cannot do. Second, he gave me the deadline. Third, he managed my expectations.

Imagine if he had only said, “I’ll get back to you.”

I might have called him four hours later only to find out he didn’t have the information yet, which would have either pissed me off, frustrated me, or destroyed some of the trust we were building, all because I didn’t know it was going to take him more than four hours to find the answer.

I might have called him back the next day to hear him say, “Oh, I forgot,” which would have blown all the trust right out of the water.

Instead he managed my expectations, which gave me an even higher sense of trust.

He knew two pieces of information I didn’t know—how long it might take him to get an answer and his own shortcoming of getting too busy and not always remembering to call everyone back in a timely fashion. While one of those might seem like a negative piece of information, letting me know both of those things turned it into a positive.

Don’t be afraid of sharing your downside and your shortcomings. Sometimes that is the information the customer needs to more fully trust you.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS He called me back in ten minutes with a full explanation of everything they would have to do and why. He not only set the expectations, he blew them out of the water them by a wide margin. That’s Great Customer Service!

December 27, 2018

Invest in Your Education

Yesterday I gave you seven things you could do with your money when you have a windfall because of a better-than-expected season. Here is one more thing to do with that extra cash …

Invest in Your Education.

Invest in making yourself and your team smarter and better. Invest in training to equip your team with better tools for selling. Invest in classes that teach you more about advertising and marketing. Invest in programs that help you better manage your money.

“Always invest in this thing (your brain).” Darius Foroux

If I were to put “Invest in Your Education” in the priority list from yesterday it would solidly be #3 right behind Cash Reserves and Pay Down Your Debt.

My real recommendation, though, is that this should be a fixed part of your yearly budget. You and your staff are simultaneously your largest asset and your biggest expense. Whether you look at this as the former or the latter will make the difference whether you are truly a customer-first business winning the race to the top or not.

If I were to prioritize where to spend the time and money on training, the list would look like this …

Selling/Customer Service: You’ll reap the benefits of this right away because your staff starts converting more of your current traffic into sales.
Hiring/Training: You’ll see quickly who is cut out to be a retail sales clerk and isn’t when you up their game. Next it is time to up your game and find better people.
Marketing & Advertising: I’ve heard many business owners lament, “If only I had more traffic …” First learn how to better take care of the traffic you have. Then, when you spend your money to learn how to get more traffic, you’ll reap twice the rewards.
Managing Your Money: Good sales and a growing market cover a lot of sins. Those sins get exposed at the first downturn. Make sure you are measuring and managing the right numbers to protect yourself for the long run.

In a few days the dust will settle on 2018. As you set your priorities for 2019, keep this list in mind. I’m sure you can probably think of a few retailers (cough, Sears) that didn’t (cough, Toys R Us) invest in (cough, Kmart) becoming better at (cough, Bon Ton) what they do.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I will be rolling out some new training programs based on the list above. Last fall, if you recall, I launched The Ultimate Selling Workshop designed for working directly with you and your team. Next month I will have newly revised programs, some designed specifically for working with business owners, some to work with managers and assistant managers, and some to work with your whole team. The priorities you set for 2019 will dictate much of the success you reap this time next year.

December 26, 2018

Save It for a Rainy Day

In the summer of 1989 my parents did something quite unique for an independent, single-store retailer. They bought a fully-integrated IBM computer system including POS and inventory control. It was a state-of-the-art IBM AS/400 with three hard drives and almost a complete Megabyte of storage. The unit was larger than our copier machine. My parents had to build a custom countertop in the office to fit the beast, run a bunch of new wiring to our six new cash registers and five new workstations, and outfit the closet in the office to hold a dot-matrix printer that printed on green-bar paper.

Our version was over 3x this size!

All in all they spent about $180,000 on that system including the software and support. (That’s the equivalent of about $368,000 in today’s dollars!)

They had the money back then because A) they had been saving, and B) it was the 80’s and everyone was making money in retail at that time.

Let’s talk about A) a little more. Savings. Cash Reserve. Rainy-Day Fund. Do you have one?

By most accounts 2018 was one of the strongest holiday seasons ever. Several retailers have told me this year was “better than expected.” That phrase usually means more money in the bank to start the new year than usual.

You have several options ahead of you for what to do with that money including:

Expand your footprint: Maybe you have been eyeing a larger space or better location, or buying instead of renting.
Expand your inventory: You could buy more now to maximize spring and summer sales, expand into a new category, or to grow your store’s capacity overall if you feel like you’ve been under-inventoried.
Pay down your debt: Almost always the best option. Getting out of debt and getting rid of high monthly bills—especially during the slow months—makes a whole lot of sense.
Pay yourself: If you haven’t been paying yourself a salary, I would suggest that you start doing that right now. If you have been paying yourself a salary, you could use this for a bonus for you and the team.
Upgrade your systems: New registers, new software, new tech are all solid investments (and not nearly as expensive as they were back in 1989).
Upgrade your infrastructure: Is it time for new shelving fixtures or a new floor?
Save it for a real emergency or need: Maybe it is best to just sit on it for a while. Economic trends tend to go in cycles and we never know how long this cycle will last. Plus, you never know when a real financial emergency might hit.

These are all valid uses for the extra cash you earn in an up year. They are all easily justifiable, too.

If you’re in this predicament (a nice one to be in, for sure), can I offer you some suggestions? If I were to prioritize them, I would list them this way:

Save it for a real emergency.
Pay down your debt.
Upgrade your system.
Expand your inventory.
Pay yourself.
Upgrade your infrastructure.
Expand your footprint.

Since Cash is King in retail, having cash reserves in the bank is the most critical element to your long-term success.

Paying down debt is good because it lowers your monthly payments and helps with cash flow month-to-month, but it doesn’t help you when something unexpected happens. You have to have some money put away with really strict rules on when and how you can spend it. After you’ve done that, then start whittling down that debt. Because of the cash flow, those two have to be your priorities.

Of course, the old adage is true, too. You have to spend money to make money. You can swap #3 and #4 interchangeably, but with tech changing so fast, having mobile apps, tablets on the floor for quick checkout, and systems that take things like Apple Pay can all help you take care of your customers better. Both 3 and 4 should help you make more money next year. If you’re happy with your tech, maybe you look into expanding into a new product category.

If you’ve already done 1-4, then pay yourself. You’ve earned it—especially since you’ve already done 1-4! You can slap a coat of paint on one wall and get some new free racks from your vendor for a fresh new look for your store if necessary.

You’ll notice, however, that I put “Expand your footprint” last. Unless you’re in an absolute hellhole or have a landlord forcing you out through outrageous raises in rents and CAM, choose this last one carefully. It has far more long-term consequences (both good and bad) than the other six.

When my grandfather moved Toy House from its original location on First Street to the Mechanic Street location, he went from 10,000 square feet to 20,000 square feet. The one kicker, though, was that he could afford to make the jump because he could afford the new building with the level of sales he was already making at the old building. If you need an uptick in sales to make the new place affordable, then it isn’t affordable.

His advice would have been to NEVER expand your footprint because of a windfall from a very good year.

Only expand when your current sales are good enough to support the expansion.

Retail is fickle. Retail is full of surprises. No matter what you do with any windfall from a good year, first put some money away and then pay off some debt. That is the “eat healthy and get exercise” of the retail world that will keep you alive for years to come.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I know retail has been tough and tight the last decade. I understand you have some rainy day fixes that you’ve been waiting for this windfall to get accomplished. Still try to put some of that cash away if you can. Tithe at least 10% of your earnings into your savings for the next rainstorm. You’ll thank me later.

PPS One year after buying that computer, Target opened in Jackson. Our business took a 15% hit that year after a decade of windfalls. It was an eye-opener for my parents and a quick lesson in how things can change so fast and why cash reserves are so important. Like I said, you never know what is right around the corner.

December 24, 2018

Merry Christmas – The Santa in You

On this glorious Christmas Eve I share with you a poem I wrote four years ago this day for a group of fellow toy store owners (we call ourselves Toy Store Owners Officially Gone Wild – that will make sense near the end of the poem). Every night during the holidays I share fun stuff with them to keep everyone’s spirits bright.

Although this poem was written for toy sellers, it really applies to all retailers who have put their heart and soul into making this season special for their customers. Hopefully you’ll see yourself in these words …

The Santa in You
Phil Wrzesinski, 12/24/14

Twas the night before Christmas and all through Toyland
The customers were cheering and giving you a hand
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care
Filled with great toys that you helped put there

The children were nestled all snug in their beds
Visions of great toys all danced in their heads
Mamma said a prayer and papa tipped his cap
The gift-wrapping you did, gave them both a longer nap

Out on the lawn, there was no clatter this night
The gifts had been hidden in the basement out of sight
There would be no need for reindeer, no elf on a sleigh
No whistling or shouting, no Santa to say…

Now, Dasher! now, Dancer!, now Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On Cupid! On, Donner and Blitzen
Not because Santa isn’t real, you know that’s not true
He’s as real as he ever was, all because of you

You’ve kept him alive through your loving and caring
You’ve kept him alive through your holiday sharing
For Santa is magical, that’s the whole truth
You don’t need to see him to have your own proof

You saw Santa when you saw people buy Toys for Tots
You saw Santa when you saw people give to those who have not
You saw Santa when you saw people being generous to others
You saw Santa in the smiles on the fathers and mothers

Those smiles, you might not know, are all meant for you
For the long hours, the late nights, and all that you do
For the phone calls and emails to vendors and reps
For the stocking and straightening and all the boxes you schlepped

Even the customers who forgot to give you their thanks
While you stood there drained, no fuel in your tanks
Even the unruly, the impossible and incredibly rude
Are better off today because of all that you do

Tomorrow morning all across this wonderful land
Kids will get toys that you picked by hand
And their smiles of delight, and their shrieks and their laughs
Are all because of you and your wonderful staffs

You are Santa, whether you ever wanted to be
You are the wonders underneath every Christmas tree
Though the credit usually goes to the jolly old elf
You are the one who put those toys on your shelf

So I tip my hat to each and every one of you
It has been my pleasure to give you all a good laugh or two
The Recap is over until Black Friday next year
But I leave you these words in hopes of good cheer

Whether your business rocked or you had a tough time
The difference you made goes far beyond the bottom line
To my fellow Toy Store Owners Officially Gone Wild
You’ve made the difference in the life of a child

Put that in your heart and hold it there tight
Happy Christmas to all and to all a Good Night!

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Feel free to share.

December 21, 2018

Christmas Quick Tip #19 – Pull it Forward

This is it. Your final quick tip of what I sincerely hope was/is a wonderful holiday selling season. I will not be posting again until after Christmas, so Merry, Merry to you. Thank you for reading these posts and sharing your success stories with me.

Here is tip #19 … (here is a link back to tip #1)

PULL IT FORWARD

Except for next day shipments, FedEx and UPS are done. You likely won’t be getting any major shipments of products in after today. Yet you still have three wonderfully busy days to sell, sell, sell.

But your shelves are looking a little bare and there is nothing left in back to bring out.

I call stocking the shelves this time of year “smoke and mirrors.”

Your job is to make your store look as full of merchandise as possible.

Here are some things you can do …

Pull everything forward to the front edge of the display/shelf
Remove shelves from the display. Three full shelves with gaps above and below looks better than four partially filled shelves.
Put excess merchandise in empty areas. We often would use large plush to fill major holes. Some of it sold from there, too!
Wrap large boxes to put on high shelves to advertise that you offer gift wrap services.
Remove free-standing displays and move items to shelves to keep fixed shelving full

If you make the store look “full”, your customers will have more confidence to buy.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Merry Christmas my friends! May Santa be as generous to you as you have been to your customers and staff.