Shrinking Margins Pinch Footwear Retailers
Retail footwear stores are seeing their profit margins shrink these days. Since it’s so easy to buy shoes online or at a cheaper competitor, the traditional brick-and-mortar shoe stores have to compete with what they do best:
- professional sales associates,
- personalized in-store engagement,
- and unique offerings you can’t find in the area.
The Problem of Shrinking Profit Margins
The problem is that professional sales associates get good wages plus commission and benefits. Personalized in-store engagement and unique offerings don’t come cheap, either. An excellent shoe store costs money to maintain, and if customers can get the same shoe somewhere else for less, most will do that.
Margins shrink, and things get tight and pinch profits, so what’s a good footwear retailer to do?
The Footwear ERP Software Solutions That Fit
It’s time to get creative and aggressive about developing tactics to compete. Some store owners cut back on the easy-to-find shoes and focus on exclusive, rare brands. Others change their commission package, offering higher incentives for sales of brands with higher margins. Emphasize the unique offerings your store alone can provide.
Utilizing technology for retail footwear management means that many of the tasks involving inventory can be automated, freeing staff to do what software can’t: provide professional fittings and expert advice for your customers.
ChainDrive’s Footwear ERP software component is part of an entire integrated retail management solution that can be customized for the real world you operate in. This tool has been designed by retailers and addresses the unique inventory challenges in footwear with factors like intelligent size analysis and multi-formula replenishment methods.
Letting the ChainDrive Footwear ERP software solution take care of managing your inventory and other factors gives your business the margin it needs to expand into its full potential as a footwear destination.