To make the best decisions possible when going to market or placing orders for an upcoming season, you need to come prepared.

Of course you’ll want to have your Open To Buy plan (OTB) which tells you how much you should be spending on new inventory, based on your sales history and projections.

But your OTB plan is only one part of your buying strategy. You also need to know what you should be spending that money on.

Which vendors have earned a coveted spot in your inventory?

If you’re just making decisions based on what you like, or even what you think your customers will like, you are making a costly mistake.

That’s where the RETAILMavens Vendor Scorecard comes in. 

What is it you ask? It is like a vendor sales report, but so much more powerful!
Because the vendor sales report from your POS usually only tells you how much each vendor sold during a specific time period. That’s it. That’s all.

And that just isn’t enough information to make educated decisions.

It’s actually so much more!

The vendor sales report from your POS usually just tells you how much each vendor sold during a specific time period. That’s it. That’s all. 

And that just doesn’t give you enough to make educated decisions.

The RETAILMavens Vendor Scorecard on the other hand, tells you:

→ The sell through rate of each vendor
→ The percentage each vendor represents of your total sales overall
→ Exactly which vendors your customers are voting for with their dollars (and not)
→ Which vendors should make the cut going forward (and which you should cut loose)

You end up with a really accurate picture of which vendors are your top performers, and which are holding you back (it might not be who you think!) and a plan for moving forward.

Curious about what your Vendor Scorecard will reveal to you? It is crucial that you do this analysis right now, so that you can make the right decisions for the holidays. 

So I’m going to share the process with you!

Are you ready? Let’s get to work!

The first thing you’ll need is:

A specific date range

You want to evaluate the performances of your vendors during a specific time frame.  The most common mistake retailers make is not specifying what time period they want to analyze.  

What do you want to know? How the vendor performed last season? Or maybe how the vendor did for you the last holiday season? 

The important thing is to NOT include any big sale events, because you want to evaluate sales at full price. 

For retailers who follow our Killer Clearance Sale Formula, this would mean from the day after your SACS ends to the day before your next SACS starts.

Now that you have the date range set, here is the first data we’ll look for in your POS:

Regardless of a vendor’s total sales number, we have to put it in perspective of the total sales to paint a better picture.

Are you with me so far?? 

Any questions about this first step? Comment below and let me know!

We cleared our calendar to talk to 5 retailers. If you’d like to talk about how to really take your store to that next level you know is possible, click here and let’s chat more.

And then continue on to Step 2 to take your Vendor Scorecard to the next level!