WHICH ACCELERATED ANALYTICS CUSTOMER IS ‘POPPING UP’ IN NEW YORK? VERA BRADLEY!

Vera Bradley has plans to open a pop-up shop in NYC, replacing a shop occupied by Kate Spade through the end of last May. Opening in September, the pop-up shop will be 2,700 square feet over 2 stories and will carry the entire Vera Bradley collection. The store will also be the grand debut of Vera Bradley’s redesigned logo and store concept.

The store is geared toward an omni-channel customer experience, with interactive touchscreens allowing customers to participate in the “It’s Good to be a Girl” campaign over social media. Three digital wall displays will display virtual patterns. A kiosk in store will open shopping on VeraBradley.com.

“We are thrilled to open our first Vera Bradley store in New York City," said Robert Wallstrom, CEO, Vera Bradley, Fort Wayne, Ind. "We look forward to showcasing our iconic collections and signature in-store experience to both the local community and tourists.”

Accelerated Analytics has worked with Vera Bradley to provide POS sales and inventory reporting and analysis for their key retailer accounts and independent specialty retailers since 2013. 

Source: Chain Store Age

AMAZON ANNOUNCING INCREASED SHIPPING FEES AND A PRIVATE LABEL APPAREL LINE MAY BE ON THE WAY

Big changes are being announced at Amazon.com. Based on shipping price increases imposed by UPS and FedEx late last year, Amazon announced its threshold for free shipping is increasing by 40%, to $49 in orders. However, Amazon is not raising the threshold with an interest in shipping revenue, but instead to incent more customers to become members of Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime members always receive free shipping on all orders, but membership costs $99 per year. These customer spend on average double what Amazon’s other customers spend, and absorbing shipping costs will be nothing to them compared to the billions of dollars in sales the company may gain.

Amazon is also hiring heavily to staff up its Amazon Fashion Private Label unit, which could take on fast-fashion chains to sellers of basic apparel. An analyst at Women’s Wear Daily estimates Amazon could launch a private label apparel brand by early 2017. Amazon can undercut prices that other fashion retailers have at brick and mortar stores, and its ability to collect customer data can help them to give customers exactly what they want.

Many Accelerated Analytics’ vendors utilize our POS reporting and analysis tools to manage their Amazon sales and inventory. These vendors sell online with the retail giant in addition to selling at department store brick and mortar stores and online sites. Being able to compare sales trends between them is a key tool to help them win at retail and ensure customers are able to access the products they want to buy regardless of which retailer they are shopping with.

Sources: Wall St. Journal, New York Business Journal

Leading Solution for DIY POS Retail Reporting

At Accelerated Analytics, we work extensively with The Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Wal-Mart data and we know how to integrate your item catalog, shipping data, plan o gram, and other key files for a comprehensive reporting solution.  With our services, you'll have more timely reporting in a consistent format available to any user with an internet connection, iPad, or iPhone.  Your analysts will be able to focus on the business instead of making spreadsheets. Plus you will have store / SKU level reporting.  Talk about powerful!

NRF SURVEY REVEALS INVENTORY SHRINK IS A $44 BILLION PROBLEM FOR RETAILERS

Inventory shrink, or the loss of product due to shoplifting, employee and vendor theft and administrative errors, costs retailers billions of dollars. The NRF and the University of Florida provided survey results this week stating that in 2014 inventory shrink averaged 1.38% of retail sales, or $44 billion.

Shoplifting accounted for 38% of the loss, followed by 34.5% in employee theft. The rest consisted of 16.5% administrative errors, 6.8% vendor fraud or error and 6.1% unknown loss.

While grocery chains have the highest shrink rate, home center/hardware/lumber/garden reported average shrinkage of 1.09%.

Tracking inventory effectively is key to managing shrink. Actual and accurate inventory counts eliminates the over/under counting in the results. Verifying product delivered is what was ordered and is accurately described in systems is also paramount – if an expected-sized item was not available, and the vendor ships a different size, but that difference is not noted, a retailer can end up with a surplus of one size, a shortage of another, and a dent in their inventory valuation. Inventory measurements should be looked at in both units and dollars. A retailer could be 99.5% accurate in dollars but only 94% accurate in units.

Shrink-related data is stored in different applications such as POS/point of sale, inventory, receiving and store applications. Having the ability to obtain reports that combine point of sale and inventory data in a timely fashion is imperative to take action quickly before the data becomes outdated.

Accelerated Analytics is a comprehensive service for collecting, analyzing and reporting on POS point of sale and inventory data, to increase sales, optimize inventory, recognize inventory shrink and respond faster to this information.

Source: Chain Store Age, ProSales

Retail POS Reporting - Getting the ROI

Numerous research studies demonstrate that retail point of sale reporting (POS reporting) provides vendors with a critical advantage in sales and inventory management.  But we often find a disconnect between the POS report and a hard ROI.  Why is that?

Many vendors that create retail POS reporting systems are managing what we call “rear view” metrics.   A rear view metric tells you what happened yesterday or last week, but it is not very helpful in making actionable plans for the future.  For example, a POS report which shows units and dollars sold for the last 4 weeks is a rear view report.  It’s helpful to know what occurred, but without additional analysis, it does not indicate to you what actions should be taken.  What you should be looking to understand is the trend that sales are likely to follow in the upcoming 4 weeks.  Is the trend positive or negative?  That is the key information you need to put action plans in place.   An inventory weeks of supply is another very strong future looking POS reporting metric.  By understanding your lead time to put product on the shelf, and then comparing it against current weeks of supply inventory, you can quickly identify potential stock outs, which kill your vendor performance scorecard and your sales. 

Many vendors do not connect the dots between the POS reporting at corporate headquarters and the store.  I have personally sat in many meetings reviewing POS reports with a vendor and asked what actions they have taken to address low inventory levels seen on a POS report, only to hear, “Well, there’s not much we can do.”  Although I know many vendors feel that is the case, I know from practical experience it is not true.  The retail buyer or replenishment manager will listen to a well thought out and well documented business case on modifying inventory allocations.  Just make sure you are prepared for that conversation with accurate POS reports and make sure your fill level is not contributing to the problem.   Buyers have sales and profitability goals to hit just like you do, and to do that they need to have the right amount of inventory on the shelf.  A word of advice – focus your pitch on a small set of test stores where you want to change the inventory handling and have a test scorecard report ready to show the buyer so they know exactly how you will track the results. 

In order to get the hard ROI out of retail POS reporting, you have to design the reports the right way.   The tips above are a good start and there are many more good ideas on our blog, so stay a while and dig around.  You can also jump over to the contact us page and ask specific questions.