What will be in your wallet on January 1st, 2023?
Focusing on these 5 tactics will allow you to start 2023 in a healthy cash position.
We are all familiar with the Capital One Credit Card commercial and it asks a great question. As we approach the 4th quarter, what you have in your wallet at the end of the year will be driven by the decisions you make NOW. There are tools and strategies you can put in place today that will help you achieve your goals.
Below are 5 to-do’s.
Have a target amount of cash you want as of January 1st, 2023
Reverse engineer to set target sales goals
Check current inventory
Add on order
Determine your open-to-buy budget by month to meet sales goals.
Use stock-to-sales ratios that are low, especially December which should be the lowest and preferably under 2 to encourage turn and flow of goods.
If goods are seasonal or only land once, plan their sell-through by month with expected ending inventories.
Plan events and sales goals with performance-based pay to achieve targets.
Map it with our 12-Week Cash Flow worksheet
2. Make sure you are not holding down your Initial Markups due to fear of inflation-driven price resistance. There is little evidence so far that your customers will balk at higher prices.
3. Check sell-throughs weekly. Establish goals and implement fixes if those goals are not met.
For example:
Any items that do not have a sell-through of 30% after 2 weeks need to be addressed. Re-merchandise, swap out to the vendor, spiff sales team, educate the sales team on product, take an early price reduction if you determine the item has had enough looks.
Any items without a 50% sell-through in a 6-week period need to be addressed vigorously.
Fast sellers take care of themselves. Focus on the slow sellers.
4. If you want to reorder an item consider the following:
Will I have time to sell 80% of it before the end of the year at full price?
Am I better off buying something else, by focusing on scarcity? Consider the value of teaching the customer to buy it when it is available, as Costco and Zara do so well.
Can bringing in a replacement item instead of re-ordering create traffic by leveraging the proven power of newness?
5. Monitor your cash weekly and make adjustments with an eye on your end-of-year target.
Focusing on these tactics will allow you to start 2023 in a healthy cash position. You do not want to be paying off 2022 vendor payables from spring sales in 2023. Stay fresh, and stay on top of the levers that allow you to realize your target. Stay focused.
Onwards and Upwards,
Marc