If “we’ve got another ten of these” sounds all too familiar, then maybe it’s time to re-assess how you get the perfect mix of gowns in your shop. What seemed a great idea with fizz flowing at a fashion show often falls flat five months later on a foggy Friday in Fife when your first order arrives and there’s a resounding chorus of “who ordered this then?”

So, what do you do to get the perfect mix of stock when you next go buying? You need to go armed with a well-planned buying strategy, and for this you need to prepare.

If you’re sitting smugly in the knowledge that at a press of a button you can run a report showing sales by supplier, shape, size, colour, and price point then you already know that pre-show preparation and retail metrics are your best friends! If the word “spreadsheet” sends shivers down your spine, what should you be analysing and how and when should you be doing this?

In Get Savvy’s Business Success Path we believe there are four key areas when it comes to running a successful bridal boutique: Business Planning & Management and Customer Experience & Attraction.
Let’s look at how you can analyse your suppliers under these different headings to drive your business forward.

Business Management

Return on Investment is critical when managing your business. ROI is a business performance measure that is used to evaluate the efficiency of any investment. If you’re not a “spreadsheet supremo” here’s a simple formula to calculate your ROI.

Take the return from your investment minus the cost of that investment and divide it by the cost of the investment and this is then expressed as a ratio.

Here’s an easy example:

• Dress sales (retail) on Label A are £40000 (new orders & samples)
• Dress samples (wholesale) are £10000 (gowns older than a year old at 50%) - 10 gowns at £500 and 20 gowns (were £500) at £250 each
• Sales from Label A = £40000 minus investment of stock for Label A = £10000, divided by the cost of investment for Label A = £10000.
• Your ROI is x3. This is the minimum to consider re-investing.

If the words formula, ratio and percentage make your head spin here is a way to take a very crude visual snapshot of which labels deserve your rail space.

Be brave and pull out all the dresses you’ve never taken an order on and group them by designer. Pull the gowns you’ve repeated on once and a third group of the gowns with two or more repeats. No calculator is needed to see which labels are earning and which are costing you money. There might be one gown which has repeated into double figures, so it justifies keeping that designer. However, once that gown is discontinued it might be a different story. The numbers do not lie. They give you the power to make informed decisions and help you identify where you should re-invest.

However, there can be other factors as well as the figures.