ICBA UNIT GROWTH VS. DISCOUNTING WORKSHEET
The ICBA Unit Growth vs. Discounting Worksheet is a tool to help you assess the impact on profitability when offering price discounts (HINT: When discounting, you have to sell many more units than you might think, just to stay even on margin dollars!).
Discounting merchandise, either temporarily as a sale, or permanently as a markdown, is part of every retailer’s merchandise management processes. There are many good and legitimate reasons to run temporary sales or take permanent markdowns. However, it is very important to understand the impact on discounting to profitability in terms of “margin dollars.”
This new tool will help you determine how many more unit sales are needed to break even on margin dollars. It varies greatly based on the natural margin ranges of various categories (e.g. supplies vs. tech products vs. apparel, etc.).
Keep all of this in mind and make informed decisions when determining exactly how much to lower prices (and how it may impact unit sales and margin dollars)!
The ICBA Unit Growth vs. Discounting Worksheet is Available to Members Only
Members, make sure you are logged in to view the worksheet.
Contact Jon Bibo (JonBibo@ICBAinc.com) for more information.
ICBA UNIVERSAL HIERARCHY
In today’s competitive retail market, you simply have to manage your business more precisely, identify trends faster, accurately benchmark against peers, and work more efficiently with suppliers. But when merchandise is inconsistently and insufficiently classified, it is difficult to take a deeper dive into the data, both within categories and across the broader industry. Because of this, ICBA is taking the lead to help independent college stores re-think their product hierarchies and move toward a more “universal” way of classifying merchandise.
A consistent and formal process to classify products is essential for proper merchandise management. ICBA, as part of a multi-year collaborative effort with other industry organizations, has developed a detailed hierarchy for both General Merchandise and Course Materials. This tool is called the ICBA Universal Hierarchy (UH).
BENEFITS OF UNIVERSAL HIERARCHY
Proper Application of the Universal Hierarchy Offers 3 Critical Benefits:
Enables more efficient and more accurate merchandise management at the store level
Enables closer and more effective vendor partnerships
Facilitates the opportunity for more accurate and relevant benchmarking across the industry
WHY USE UNIVERSAL HIERARCHY?
The Universal Hierarchy allows for a more granular categorization of merchandise, which can result in higher quality, more actionable data.
The UH was constructed to find the right mix of hierarchy depth vs. ease of use/implementation to serve all types and sizes of College Stores. It can be implemented at multiple levels of depth to suit the needs of each store in each product category.
The goal is to implement a General Merchandise Universal Hierarchy (GMUH) that addresses today’s emblematic and non-emblematic product/category needs but also anticipates future growth categories and opportunities.
The goal of the Course Materials Universal Hierarchy (CMUH) is to enable more accurate classification given the expanding and diverse nature of Course Materials in the marketplace (including New, Used, Digital, and Digital/Print hybrid products).
ICBA Universal Hierarchy is available to Members Only
Contact Jon Bibo at JonBibo@ICBAinc.com to learn more about how the Universal Hierarchy works and how it can benefit your store.
ICBA VENDOR SCORECARD
ICBA has created a tool called the ICBA Vendor Scorecard to assist Member stores in the process of fairly and consistently evaluating current and future vendor partnerships.
Establishing productive, mutually beneficial partnerships with vendors is an essential component of retail success. Each vendor partnership is critical and each vendor partnership should be considered carefully. Defining roles for each vendor in a given category will enable you to develop closer partnerships and will make you more efficient in how you evaluate new partnership opportunities. It also enables new vendors to better understand what is important to win your business.
The ICBA Vendor Scorecard focuses on 20 criteria that can be used to rate and assess each vendor. How each vendor “ranks” is dependent on how each ICBA Buyer values each of the criteria. ICBA is not providing an “absolute” rating system, rather, the Scorecard is a simply a tool for each Member store to use to fit their needs. The Scorecard can also be used differently from Buyer to Buyer in various store product categories.
THE ICBA VENDOR SCORECARD SCALE
The ICBA Vendor Scorecard is based on a 1-4 scale (with 4 being the most favorable and 1 being the least favorable). How you determine what is a 1 vs 2 vs 3 vs 4 is up to you (as long as you are consistent). You also have the opportunity to adjust the “weighting” of each of the criteria to suit your needs and expectations for your vendors (in Column F). For instance, you may feel that MARGIN OPPORTUNITY and LEAD TIMES are much more important than other criteria. ICBA recommends that you adjust the weighting on each criteria accordingly. ICBA recommends that weights are adjusted as following: 100% (no adjustment), 150%, or 200%. For example:
If “Low Minimums” is weighted at 150%, a score of “3” will adjust to 4.5 (150% of the original value)
If “Lead Times” is weighted at 200%, a score of “2” will adjust to 4 (200% of the original value)
FLEXBILE TO FIT YOUR NEEDS
Another feature of the ICBA Vendor Scorecard is the opportunity to add additional criteria that may be important to you. Those additional criteria can be added in rows along the bottom of the spreadsheet and you can weight those additional criteria as you see fit.
You may also elect not to use one or more of the criteria if it is not relevant to you.
The ICBA Vendor Scorecard Spreadsheet is Available to Members Only
Members, make sure you are logged in to view the scorecard.
Contact Jon Bibo (JonBibo@ICBAinc.com) for more information.
