Have you managed to sell it all already? Alternatively, are you trying your best to maintain margin and hold onto the stock in the hope that if you are the last retailer standing with those last few items that they will become more desirable again?

Whatever your strategy, old stock needs to be turned back into cash at some point and the smart money is looking to do that ASAP. That way you can use your knowledge to invest in the new and exciting seasons products. The quicker you get the new products in store and online the greater the chance you are giving yourselves to sell at a higher margin.

I am sure you have all been to the trade shows and spoken to the reps and have either already placed the order or are just about to. Either way, new stock will soon be arriving and you need the physical space and cash currently tied up in old stock so you can be ready for the new season.

What if you were able to identify how much stock you had at the beginning of the season and how long it would take you to sell it? What if you could sell all that stock before end of season? With Citrus-Lime you can. Imagine the effect that would have on your achieved margin.

We firmly believe that if you are able to see how much stock you have, how many weeks cover you have (how long it takes to sell it) and you know when your sale season begins then you have all the information you need to increase your achieved margin and increase profit.

Grant Hadwin, Head of Sales & Marketing.

Why is knowing my Weeks Cover important?

Say you have £60k of stock with a retail value of £100k, and a margin of 40%, then the most profit you can expect is £40k before commissions etc.

Once end of season comes around, you’ll need to sell all remaining stock (if any!). Let’s say you apply a 20% discount, you have halved your margin and thus your achieved margin is much less than the 40% you were aiming for at the beginning of the season.

However, if you were able to promote the product throughout the season and use your weeks cover to decide how aggressive you are earlier in the season this can help you to sell through it all before others start to discount for the end of season.

How do I calculate Weeks Cover?

For simplicity’s sake, let’s say that you have a stock turn* of 2.6.

* Stock turn, for the uninitiated, is a measure of the number of times stock is sold in a given time period such as a year. An average stock turn of 2.6 in a specialist retail environment is typically representative of a good balance between meeting demand, achieving meaningful growth and still having something akin to a successful work-life integration.

The maths behind

There are 52 weeks in a year… so 52/2.6 = 20 weeks.

Your average weeks cover is 20.
In other words, on average, it should take 20 weeks to sell through your entire stock position (all knowable factors considered).

Understanding the Numbers

In knowing your Average Weeks Cover value, you can now look at brands, departments, categories or individual items and assess that which is selling at such a rate that you are likely to run out of before demand eventually wanes.

You should be mindful that, despite the maths, it’s not a pure science. There’s the art that you bring to it, too … through your experience and skills as a retailer.

This is just one way to improve the sustainability and profitability of your retail business and is easily achieved using the quality data and reporting in Citrus-Lime Cloud POS.