After an intensive 48 hours, our temporary new store at Forest Hill Chase is looking pretty good. Thanks to help from a cheerful and energetic team, we compressed stock from our 330 sq m store on level 2 into the 97 sq m temporary location on level 1. While we still have a couple of days work to finesse the new location, we are open for business. Indeed, we did not miss any trading hours.
It is interesting how one views stock when space is limited. Every stock item has to pay its way, there is no room any underperforming items to be propped up by others and no room for us to carry something because of a belief that newsagents should carry such an item.
So far, we have cut 400 magazine titles – none was cashflow positive. We have also cut around 65% of our stationery range. Half was cash flow negative and half was out of space necessity. We have retained almost the entire range of everyday cards and a trimmed lifestyle offer. We have also retained our paperback books and book sale space allocation and set aside space for diaries and calendars.
It helped tremendously that we had our own qualified and centre approved technician on the ground for two days to take care of all of the technical complexities including moving the Tattersalls, fax, phone, internet and other lines. It also helped that we engaged a centre approved shopfitter to manage moving card fixtures and repurposing our Tattersalls bench. The team from Hallmark was a tremendous help yesterday morning as was the team from our own businesses.
I am sure we will discover that we have made some mistakes. We will work on those when we discover them. In the meantime, we are looking forward to a few months in the trim location and the experience it provides.
A huge job that most of us would find over whelming, but how do you manage to cull magazines I have had some ding dong fights with all suppliers trying to cut particular magazines. I will get one stopped or reduced and then get supplied with some other useless mag that cost me time to early return. You obviously have a magic formula. I have the same problem trying to increase supply to a suitable level.
Congratulations to you and your team Mark. Having done something similar many years ago I have a guess at how much planning you must have done for this.
I bet you will be glad to get back to full space though. The interesting thing that you will no doubt post on in the future is how this shrinking of your business effects how you return to full size and which areas of the business gain or loss out on space in your new store layout.
Will make compelling reading.
Good luck,
Steve