8 minute read
Second Opinion
Sue Lovell Owner of Susan Nicholas Opulent Bridal, Cambridgeshire
Being ready and willing to face the challenges that this new year looks certain to bring will put you one step ahead. Sue Lovell has a plan
Has everyone recovered from celebrating a proper Christmas? Did you long for a Covid restriction Christmas again, or did you, like me, make up for all the lost Xmas parties of 2021. I also spent my recovery time watching shows from the 1980s, laughing with my kids about the dark ages that were my youth, team Red Dwarf or Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy vs Dr Who?
So here we are, the dawn of 2023 – dare we hope for a smooth ride, prosperity even? As Covid becomes as common as Flu, we can now look forward to more predicted doom and gloom. Drum roll please, enter The Cost of Living Crisis! I am looking at this new crisis with optimism, and I intend to embrace the issues faced by many, if not all of us all. Whether you are sitting pretty, of sitting on a cliff edge, the cost of living crisis is going to have an impact on us all. People will undoubtedly be cutting back, our costs are already rising, so we will all be feeling the pinch on some level. Now is the time to plan, to get us safely through this new crisis. It is time to identify our strengths and say goodbye to our weak spots.
Putting intentions in place New Year is usually when I take stock of myself and my business. I take time to think. You know that feeling you get when you wistfully see all these fabulous people, organised, top of their game gurus, and you aspire to be like that; or perhaps you are already all round fabulous?
I’d love to say I am just like that. Sadly, I am not, and at this stage in my life, that kind of change is a lost cause. I am a complete charlatan, a chaotic mess of a woman, who flies by the seat of her pants. I am reactive and impulsive, I lead with my heart not my head. I see the good in everyone first, get mortally wounded when I find out they are not that nice after all. I fight for the underdog, champion the successful and I am super sensitive and hideously insensitive all at once.
But God loves a trier - and I most definitely am one of those! I am nothing if not realistic; real change is probably too late for me, but I can adapt and work with what I already know. If I was a Life Coach, my logo would be Headless Chicken.
It’s exciting stuff, living on the edge, but even I have to have some organisation to have an idea where I am headed, even if every New Year I seem surprised that I am still here!
What makes us so brilliant is that we are all marching to our own drum, we all know what our USP is and what makes us different, and we know that we do not all need to be doing the same thing – trying to be like everyone else – a chain rather than independents.
Our strength is knowing that being independent means being ourselves. We are not factory produced, we appeal to different types of people, because we are different people. Knowing your numbers Whilst we can learn so much from others, there is also so much that cannot be taught, it comes from within.
I have never been at one with numbers, I get more pleasure from my bedsheets than my spreadsheets, but I do know that all the information that I need is at my fingertips, free of charge, under my nose. I make time to sift through the data I have collected, so I can understand what I am doing well, where I am falling, what I need to focus on and what or who I need to let go. It’s all in the data!
Watching the Hitchhiker’s Guide reminded me of the importance of data. The writer, Douglas Adams, worked out that the answer to life, the universe and everything. It is 42. How did he work that out? Well, the Super Computer gave them the answer. The book is more than 40 years old and well before PCs were mainstream, but it bizarrely can relate to bridal retail.
Adams knew that the computer’s output is determined entirely by what is input. Putting in data that described life, the universe and everything is by virtue of the volume of data, meaningless. Data isn’t useful unless you know what to do with it. So are you using the critical data you already have at your fingertips? Is the input to your own super computer accurate? Using our data sources will help support our own human judgements and instincts.
I know I have talked about this before, ‘knowing your customer’ but it is so important that we really understand who our customer is, not just who we hope her to be. Our data will show us where she comes from, how she finds us, where she hopes to get
married, what type of wedding she is having, her size, her budget, her style. Once we know all these things, we can plan how we decorate our stores to make her feel at home, how we present and where we promote our websites and how we get her attention in the first place.
Our customer changes. The way she shops is changing, so we need to be able to see those changes and move with them. If you use Bridalive, or any CRM, you can easily collate your data. Export it to a spreadsheet and you may be surprised what you find. Many of us are guilty of collecting it, but doing nothing with it.
Knowing where you stand On a recent inspection of my data I was surprised to see that my cheaper label was actually costing me money. The cost of that collection far outweighed the return. I found out that my clients didn’t even ‘favourite’ those dresses. So why was I investing in them? Mainly because it gave me a better entry level price point, but clearly that wasn’t as important to my clients as I had thought.
With the C.O.L.C. in full swing, I apologise for stating the obvious – but our shops need to be warm. With fuel costs rising, that may not be top of your list of priorities, but it should be. Recently. a customer announced she would be buying from me, purely because my shop was warm and cosy. Four shops she had visited had been cold and too unpleasant to get undressed. Saving money on the heating may be costing sales in the long run.
If you are like many shops, considering closing an extra day over the winter period to save on a day’s heating, check your data to make sure you are closing on the right day of the week. You probably know the days you sell the most and the days that you are generally quieter, but check your data to make sure that your instincts are right.
I thought Wednesday was my quiet day, but on further investigation I found it is usually very profitable; I just tried to have a day off on a Wednesday, so I convinced myself they were quieter. Now it makes more sense to close Mondays, having two back-to-back days without the heat constantly running,
I spent a lot of time at the end of 2022 up to my
earrings in data, finance and in meetings to ensure all that I do is compliant, and by the book in regard to finance. You can’t be chaotic with other people’s money, and my clients need to be able to trust that their purchase is safe and solid.
I have managed to secure Interest Free Payment Plans for BrideCo members, so we can offer our clients a more flexible way to pay for their dress. This Cost of Living Crisis may adversely affect our sales, so we need to pre-empt this, finding ways of making it easier for our customers to pay.
I know many shops offer payment plans through their own books, but these can cause humongous headaches, as they are not regulated or controlled, and can often fall foul of compliance rules. If you do offer your own inhouse payment plan, make sure your contracts correctly reflect consumer credit law, to ensure both you and your customer are protected.
In the spirit of being organised, I decided to start with my personal life and tackle the nightmare that is my kitchen. Taking responsibility for my chaotic cupboards, ownership of my carefree dumping of cooking things I don’t use, don’t know how to use, or even know their purpose has been very cathartic. (Well, at least that’s what the lady said who I paid to do it for me). I may not be able to change habits of a lifetime, but I can adapt the way I get the results I want.
ronaldjoyce.com
