As a retailer, you are certainly well into planning your inventory requirements for the upcoming prime selling season. With your Candles of Eden and other quality product lines well stocked and a selling plan for that stock ready to go, you can capitalize on the increased traffic, which will come your way. It’s wise at this time of the year to take a fresh look at your inventory departments and classifications within those departments.

When you operate your business according to departments and classifications, you are applying structure to your business. This means you are not haphazardly offering products to your customers. Your store is not one huge mish-mash of stock thrown out there waiting for a free-for-all stampede from buyers. Inventory departments and classifications present your merchandise in an organized and efficient manner. You group like products into departments and promote each department according to its own special characteristics.

Think of each department in your retail shop as a stand-alone business. If you have five departments in your store, think of your store as a mall with five distinct retail shops in it. This way you will give each department its own unique persona. While each department is under the umbrella of your store’s persona, they will be highly individual departments that each offers something different to your customers. This gives your clientele a varied and rich shopping experience.

However, have you ever really considered the number of departments you have and the number of classifications within a department. I remember one retail textbook I studied years ago suggesting that you need to keep the number of departments and classifications in your enterprise under control. Upon further study, the reasoning was sound. The suggestion was that you should have no more than ten departments in your store and each department should consist of no more than ten classifications.

The “ten” number is significant. The teachings showed that a business operates efficiently when they know what departments and classifications are giving them the most revenue. You do not want to have departments and classifications that do not provide return for the time, energy, and money you spend to maintain them. Therefore, retail analysts believe each department in your operation should account for at least 10 percent of your sales. What does this all mean? It means there’s no reason to have more than ten departments in your operation.        More than that and you have a bunch of departments’ contributing very little. You could have 100 departments each contributing one percent to your business. However, try maintaining that. You will spend too much time on departments that are not contributing much.

It’s the same with your classifications within a department. Each classification should bring in at least 10 percent of the business for that department. That means you should have no more than ten classifications within a department.  Consider your large candle department. You may offer our elegant and environmentally friendly Candles of Eden soy candles, which may make up 40 percent of your candle sales. You may have another line of candles that brings in 30 percent of your candles sales. Then you may have 10 other lines bringing in 30 percent of your business. You have to expend, time, money, and people resources maintaining all these lines. These ten lines are only bringing in an average of three percent of your sales. Why not cut your lines back to the top three that will generate 100 percent of your candles sales – with less effort on your part. This is efficient retail management.

It’s close to the time when SoyLuscious® Soy Candles and other lines will experience sales increases. Organize your business for efficient selling. Get the best quality products out there, grouped into ten or less departments in your store. Have ten or less classifications within each department. Make sure each department in your store provides a minimum of 10 percent of your sales. Make sure each classification within a department is contributing at least 10 percent of the sales of that department. You will fine-tune your retail business when you apply the ten-percent solution.