Most commercial operations need stock, whether manufacturers, importers, distributors, retailers and even many service providers. It is a simple equation. If you don’t have it , you got nothing to sell. You got nothing to sell , you can’t make any money .

There are some principles relating to stock…What? How many? How much? & When? Dead straightforward, except for the answers, which are rather more complex.

I am the last person to make any suggestions as to how anyone should approach this problem. Forecasting has to be part of the equation, but the days are long gone when you could look at this month last year and see that you sold umpteen thousand ‘whatmewidget’ and make an informed estimate as to what you will sell this month. It no longer works like that. Yet you still have to plan . Trust me when I say that even the most sophisticated retailers with the most complex of logistical programs often get it wrong. In today’s market thereare now more and more imponderables.

But that is not what I want to talk about, it is the absolute need to get the right stock. Having declared my ignorance on inventory control mechanisms, I have to base my experience on being a consumer and having daily conversations with clients about the dark arts of stock .

I, firmly, believe if you walk into a store selling the type of item you are looking to buy and they do not have it in stock , it is a lost sale. This may seem blindingly obvious, but has not always been the the case. Prior to the days of online selling. You may have purchased an alternative or waited for it to be back in stock. That is no longer the case , you whizz off home, or even whip your phone out and order it immediately. Web shop 1, High Street retailer 0.

You may (very loyal consumer) amble down to your specialist high street stockist of the latest cutting edge brand of beach sandals for help and advice, plus the intention of making a purchase. On arrival after hours of discourse with the well informed, highly trained sandal expert, to find that they only stock twenty variations of this cutting edge brand, out of the one hundred and thirty offered by the manufacturer and available through cuttingedgesandals.com or Amazon. Web shop 2, High Street retailer 0.

Old or even dead stock is like a virus. It slowly eats into a business and can often lead to its own death . Online operators, potentially, have the ability to purge themselves a lot quicker because of their vast reach. Not only that it does visually clog up their store . It is a lot more difficult for the high street. But get rid of it you must . Old stock make shops look ill. Web shop 3, High Street retailer 0.

The rational behind the scoring analogy is to illustrate that the problem shops have with web sites is not all about price. Stock is, if not more , as important as price. Yet it is not all ‘happy days’ for online traders. Their issues can be bigger. Whilst they have greater opportunities to clear stock, invariably their stock levels are a lot higher and their cost to clear are a lot higher .

From a ‘professional’ view point, I deal with a lot of wholesalers , who, in turn, generally deal with a lot of small independents. They will, frequently, say that their customers will not carry stock and are not interested in anything new !! Unfortunately, I have a similar experience with some independents. There is an attitude of staying with what they know and being safe. I contend there is no ‘safe’. I would contend that ‘safe’ stock = ‘dangerous’ stock.

I cannot begin to recount the number of meetings with customers, where they have looked at the products being offered , and said something like

That’s great. Super product, yes I really like that. There are some really good products in this range

Only for them not to select anything because they stick with what they have got… if it happens to me it sure as will happen to other suppliers, no matter what the industry.

There are many challengers facing all types of retailer. However, without ‘good’ stock the rest are pretty well irrelevant.

if you ain’t got it, you can’t sell it ….

As two more High Street ‘favourites‘ threaten to disappear, much of the media shed crocodile tears over their likely demise. The real tears will be shed by their employees and creditors , particularly the smaller ones, who in turn may also loose jobs as a consequence.

Senior management , in addition to some journalists, said it was down to Brexit and online competition. How so ?

Toy R Us appeared from the States in the 1980’s. This retail invasion created its own havoc. Many long established independent toy retailers closed unable to compete with these huge toy warehouses. At the time as a potential customer (father with small child) I found them soulless, unhelpful and clinical. So they remain. They changed little as the travails of their US parent company, already in Chapter 11 , prevented any real investment. If it was the Brexit and online , why have competitors such as the Entertainer , a private company with nearly 150 stores in the U.K. and various stores overseas in such diverse nations as Azerbaijan and Pakistan, and Smyth Toys, with over 110 stores in Eire and the U.K. flourished as Toys R us have faltered .

Maplins is a very different ‘kettle of fish’. It is a British chain, being started by husband and wife in Essex in the 1970’s . However, they have too, been strapped for cash over the last few years and were taken over four years ago by private equity. Personally, I felt their offering was very niche, even ‘nerdy niche’. My experience within store has always been excellent. I say my experience, I mean annual visit to spend £7.98p on something I needed but didn’t really know what it was. And I think therein, lay the problem. The core of the product range being very nerdy, consequently many of their potential regulars knew what they were buying and could get it off the internet. Finally, the stores did not attract the female consumer reducing their potential target audience

As with the demise of C&A, Woolworths, BHS et al, the media shrieks ‘crisis on the High St’ seeks out consumers for quotes, which are more than often phrased in some similar way to the following….

…we will miss X from our local High Street……we have such fond memories when we were 6 years old (for 6 replace with any number as long as it 5 years from your current age!)

What you don’t hear is we spend fifty quid in there every month…in other words the consumer stopped going there. The retail environment is not sustainable on nostalgia alone. Nostalgia to be successful has to be ‘created ‘ in a twenty first century environment. It has never been any different . In the late sixties and early seventies , nostalgia was crushed by the advent of the modern supermarket. Over a period of less than twenty years , quite literally tens of thousands of corner shops closed. The press, once again, headlined the loss. But it was not all bad. For many employed in small independents, were re-employed by the nationals and found a structured retail career that would not have otherwise been open to them working for local corner shop.

There are good reasons to be wary of online operations. Currency fluctuations are a constant concern for all retail organisations, throughout the world. The aberration that is called business rates, is a major bugbear. Yet many retailers continue to thrive. The reasons for failure are sometimes complex, but invariably there are common issues, over leveraged, lack of investment and the belief that because the consumer used to like coming through the front doors, they will continue to do so. The U.K. High street still has many chains that are hanging in there by their fingertips. They are often recognisable by the drab and dated interiors, inadequate stock, poor ranging , and the obvious lack of custom. Invariably if you walk into one and it feels like a 1970’s , it probably is. That’s not nostalgia.

A bizarre consequence of nostalgia is the resurgence of the ‘LP’. It is believed that nearly fifty per cent of purchases are made by people without a record player. New record shops have consequently sprung up. Which is great but is it sustainable? Most of those who have opened these shops are eager enthusiasts, not retailers. I am a child of the sixties and apart from the album covers, I never thought much of the product then. When cds arrived , most couldn’t wait to get rid of them ( the LP that is).

Nostalgia should not be confused with tradition (recent post). Tradition is doing something in the way in which it has been done for many years . Nostalgia is harking back to something in the past and having warm cosy feeling about that ‘something ‘ . The commercial danger lies in not defining as to whether there are any real benefits from either to the business and more importantly are either hampering the business.

As is often the case, the media is often to blame. Only today in the Sunday Times , a journalist (fortunately not a financial journalist) states the failure of Toys R us is due to kids not having toys anymore. What utter tosh. The market in 2017 was approximately £3.5 billion and is estimated to grow to £5 billion by 2022. That’s a load of toys, what is relevant is where they are bought.