Is Your Merchandising Strategy Like A Shotgun?
A shotgun is useless for competitive target shooting because it is not designed to focus its shot. Instead, the shot sprays out and scatters across a wider area. Good for making sure you hit somewhere, which is what a shotgun is designed to do. But it is no good for ensuring you hit exactly where you are aiming.
Rifles, on the other hand, are designed to spin a bullet and focus the aim to a precise point. When it hits the target, you see the exact location and can assess the accuracy of the shooter. Rifles shoot farther, too. The target can be a greater distance away and still be accurately hit. The rifle is the tool you want to use when you are trying to win a target shooting competition.
These two approaches are similar to two types of merchandising strategies.
The shotgun strategy of merchandising pushes all the inventory out into every store in one shot. Everything is out there, scattered across all your channels. This will hit some of your target, and the stuff that doesn’t sell can be marked down gradually to get rid of it. You could even collect all the unsold merchandise into one spot for discount seekers.
The rifle merchandising strategy focuses on the specific data from each store, adapting the flow of inventory to the customer demand. It takes more analysis and adaptive design, but it also takes less ammunition to hit the target and less unsold merchandise is the result.
ChainDrive merchandising software acts a lot more like a rifle than a shotgun. You can categorize your inventory the way that works best for your business, simulate different scenarios to predict and plan future merchandising strategy, and more.
We can show you how to hit your target again and again, by using the right tool for the job. Explore our merchandising solution and tell us what you think.