Building the roadmap for retail growth: Heyday
Becoming a successful retailer and building sustained growth in the business doesn’t happen overnight and there will be unforeseen challenges along the way that can derail even the best laid plans. Using retail data as a “north star” for over 15 years, Heyday has shown year-over-year growth, weathered the recent economic turmoil and become a pillar of their community.
Learn how Heyday charted a course for success through data-driven planning and execution with Management One and veteran Retail Expert Ritchie Sayner.
Heyday opened its doors in Bozeman, Montana in November of 2007. Bozeman is a unique college community with a strong economic base and a population of about 50,000 people. Gallatin County is experiencing significant growth, especially as many flock to the mountains from larger, metropolitan cities. Additionally, Bozeman is a gateway town to Yellowstone National Park, one of the most sought-after vacation destinations in the country. In the spring of 2017, the store embarked on a major remodel nearly doubling the selling square footage. Mallory Dabney began working at the store in the fall of that year and end up purchasing the store in February 2019.
Before that transition, Heyday was introduced to Ritchie Sayner in 2008 through a referral from Meridian, a highly successful women’s boutique and long-time client of Sayner’s located down the street. Interestingly, Mallory had worked at Meridian prior to accepting a position at Heyday, so her retail acumen was already well-established.
Identifying imbalances
In the beginning, growth was stunted by a lack of direction and inventory balance. The potential was always there, but some classifications were understocked resulting in missed opportunities while others ended up overstocked causing additional markdowns to clear the inventory. Previous ownership was quick to recognize that the lack of merchandise planning information was limiting the store’s true upside potential and quickly accepted Sayner’s offer to help.
Fast forward fifteen years and the challenges are much different than before. Now the focus is on managing growth including the eCommerce store.
“Constant, on-going and informed inventory planning has been a key component to Heyday’s success.”
-Mallory Dabney, Owner
Through scheduled monthly meetings with Ritchie, the store identifies areas of potential increase as well as those in need of improvement and attention. Every SKU is reviewed weekly on Monday mornings by the buyers. Reorders are made on hot sellers and slow sellers are quickly identified and discussed with cross-functional partners – marketing, merchandising and sales team.
Child classes were added underneath the planned classes in order to identify areas of potential growth. This, coupled with a constant flow of new merchandise, has insured that seldom will inventory languish in the store for longer than 60 days. With the guidance and support of Management One, the Heyday team, as buyers, are fully in control of their inventory balance, open-to-buy, and ultimately the profitability of the business.
And the results speak volumes!
The growth and success of the online store came with allocated resources and investment upfront to grow the business and prove profitability. Spotting opportunities to generate cash through inventory helped fuel these investments and allowed the team to embrace new avenues of digital commerce.
Dedicated efforts on social platforms, both paid and organic, continued engagement with a robust email list, and deeply integrated collaborations with local organizations and artists have continued the growth of HeydayBozeman.com.
Realizing the true potential
After over 15 years in business, Heyday is a pillar of its downtown community. Through hard work, perseverance and the ability to make data-driven decisions, the volume of Heyday has grown year after year. From its first full year of operation to projected 2021 sales, they’ve seen an almost 1500% increase in projected sales, while optimizing inventory turnover from a 2x inventory turn to a well-tuned 5x!
It is noteworthy that in 2020, a year plagued by the challenges and uncertainties of Covid-19, Heyday posted its best year yet with an increase of 12.7%. Markdowns also fell to historical lows of <5% of sales. Moving ahead, the increase in 2021 over 2020 was 45.3% making it the best year in Heyday history and 2022 is currently on track with YTD increases of 5.9%.
“M1 offers a road map for the growth and scalability of our business; offering key hindsight into what’s working and should be optimized and what areas need immediate attention and allow us to pivot.”
- Mallory Dabney
Learn more about M1 Retail Expert Ritchie Sayner
Ritchie has spent over four decades helping independent retailers improve profitability. In addition to speaking to retail groups at educational programs nationwide, he contributes articles regularly to industry publications on a variety of retail topics. Prior to his retail consulting career, Ritchie was the general merchandise manager for an independent department store in the Midwest. His primary focus with the clients he works with, is increasing sales volume with balanced stock levels, and strengthening cash flow.
His inspirational book, Retail Revelations: Strategies for Improving Sales, Margins, and Turnover, 2nd Edition is also available on Amazon.com.