Bookstore owners must wear many hats and they rarely have enough time to dedicate their best efforts to any one area of responsibility. Most store owners are responsible for hiring, firing, training, marketing, advertising, merchandising, community networking, bookkeeping, ordering, receiving, and stocking books, and finally reading. How many of you opened a bookstore because you love books and reading, only to find that you have little time to read?
Is ordering books a tedious, time consuming process that involves sorting through stacks of index cards, scattered sheets of paper, or probing the depths of your memory? Have you ever reordered a book that had been on the shelf for two years, just because you sold it last week? Do you have merchandise that has been in the store for over a year, tying up precious capital that could be used for fresh, new stock? If you were using The Book Wizard the answer to all of these questions would be NO.
Increased competition and low profit margins makes it more important that ever for booksellers to manage their inventory accurately and efficiently. Your money should not be invested in books that just sit on the shelves gathering dust, nor should you miss sales because some of your best sellers are out of stock. Identifying books that need to be returned and timely reordering of your core stock will increase inventory turns and yield more revenue with less money invested. The importance of inventory turns is illustrated in the following example. A store with gross sales of $400,000 and inventory turns of 2.5 would need $96,000 worth of inventory at cost to support their sales. If the turns are increased to 3.0 the store would only need $80,000 worth of inventory at cost, and $68,571 with 3.5 turns. By turning inventory only one more time, the store would have an extra $20,000 to put toward advertising, marketing or fresh stock.
Time is money and time saved is money earned. Creating a purchase order, with The Book Wizard, is many times faster and more accurate than any manual ordering method. You can quickly review a list of books that sold last week, or all the books in a particular section, or books that you get from a specific publisher or distributor, view their sales history, pick just the books that you want to order and add them directly to a purchase order. Ordering can take minutes instead of hours. Ordering smarter will also increase inventory turns. The time saving efficiencies of The Book Wizard will free up more valuable time for you to devote to other areas of your business.
The ability to identify the best selling books, from each section, allows you to create a core stock of books that should always be on the shelves. Up to 80% of sales can come from only 20% of the inventory. Having the right books at the right time will increase sales and enhance customer satisfaction. Handling special orders in a timely and efficient manner will also increase customer satisfaction. The book club feature will provide an incentive, for customers, to return to your store because the discount is based on the purchase of a certain number of books. If the customer needs only two more books to earn the book club discount, they will return to your store, for their next book purchase, and not to the competition. The customer's status in the book club prints on every receipt.
Efficient, accurate management of your inventory will yield an increase in sales and inventory turns and give you more time to devote to other aspects of your business. You cannot afford to be without The Book Wizard any longer.
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