Catch the Dots — Weekly Retail Tidbits #265
Catch the Dots
“The world cannot be understood without numbers, and it cannot be understood with numbers alone.”
— Hans Rosling, Factfulness
My husband looked pretty funny. He had his phone above his head, staring up at it and walking in messy looking circles.
He was trying to find the right spot for Starlink.
He gave up, and it was my turn. Dots — catch the dots. The app shows you where the dots are and you move around to try to capture them. If you catch enough of them, the location will work for your Starlink to communicate with the satellites moving around Earth.
The directions Starlink gives you share at what angle you need things to be. I looked at the big directions sheet and thought wow — this is a lot of math.
Thankfully it was not math involving connecting the dots and understanding it.
We just had to collect the data — catch the dots.
Starlink could take that dot data and make sense of it. Our goal, of course, was to be online.
Catching the dots. Collecting the data.
Some of you have great software systems designed to do this for you. You put in your purchases, your sales, and you track lots of other expenses.
Some of you eyeball it all and make your best guesstimate.
I have done both. It’s a lot easier when a system tracks it for you. The data is more accurate.
But you still have to know 🧠 what your numbers are telling you.
So here is what I wish I had known as a retailer. Start with two numbers, per line. Look at what you have invested in inventory dollars, and what you have sold since January 1.
Then divide your sales by your inventory dollars.
Let’s take one line as an example. You have sold $10K since January 1 and you have $2K of it sitting on your shelves right now. Ten divided by two is five. For every $1 you have sitting there, that line has brought in $5 this year. That line is working. It has earned more of your money.
Now take a line where you have sold $3K and have $2,500 sitting there. That is $1.20 in sales for every $1 on the shelf. That line is not moving, and it needs a decision.
Leave out anything that has not had a real selling season yet, and anything seasonal whose season has not come. A Christmas line judged on September numbers will tell you to cut the thing you are about to sell.
Do that for every other line you carry. Write the two numbers down side by side. You will see your store in a way you have not seen it before.
Then rank them by that number. The highest ones are your best sellers, and your customers told you so with their dollars. The number tells you where to look. It does not make the decision for you.
We are heading into fourth quarter soon. This is the week to know that list.
Starlink took our dots and did the math for us. Your numbers will do the same, if you have collected the data you need to use to figure it out.
I love helping you figure that out. Many of you do send your data to get that quick reorder. But it’s a reorder with a human touch. A human who knows you, your store, the manufacturer, and lots of other variables that matter when spending money to make money.
Cheering you on for amazing holidays!
xoxo,
❤️ AmyFay
Technology Tip
What Your Numbers Do Not Know
Here is the part the data cannot do.
That $10K line might be your best seller and still be the wrong reorder. What if you already have Christmas items coming that need temporary space? What if your fourth quarter theme is gold, green and red, and this line doesn’t match what you are creating? What if you are under-staffed to merchandise what is already sitting on your dock?
None of that is in your numbers. And AI cannot know any of it — unless you tell it.
That is what making AI work for you actually means. Not asking it a question and hoping. It’s giving it what it doesn’t have. What else you have coming in. How much back stock space you have. What you are building this season.
Save those notes somewhere it can read them. Add to them as you go. Then it stops giving you generic answers and starts giving you yours.
We caught the dots, and Starlink did the math. But it could not tell us we didn’t want a dish sitting in the middle of the view from the porch. That part was ours.
That is what makes you special. It is why no one can create exactly what you are creating, even if you have some things in common with another store.
3 Tango Tidbits
These Are Hard to Eyeball
erin gray — The Fall Cashmere, and the Jewelry Case
 Have you ordered your fall? |
The 14k gold-filled assortment. |
Bracelets are small — a full display hides which ones are really selling. With clothing, the size you’re out of is almost always your best one, which is why the rest sit. Keep every size stocked, and go deeper in the ones that move.
Bunnies by the Bay — The Fluffle
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The Nibble bunny comes in four sizes and eight colors, and the seasonal ones sit on top of that. Nobody reads a wall like that by eye. Give it a standing spot on your reorder schedule.
ORI London — The Carnaby Hook
 Carnaby Crossbody XL, Mini Leopard |
ORI London has 91 active Carnaby SKUs in three sizes. A full hook still looks full, right up to the day the color everybody wanted is gone. Your system knows which one that was.
Featured on Instagram
New acrylic ornaments from @evabelle.simplyboardsandmore — Preorder now for Holiday 🎄
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| View on Instagram → |
“…turn data into information, information into knowledge and insight, and knowledge into competitive advantage.”
— Carly Fiorina, then CEO of Hewlett-Packard · Oracle OpenWorld, 2004
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What are your dots telling you? 😊 xoxo, |
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June Market Fun
With our star eyes on, because Tango is exploding with great stuff! 🌟
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| Shop Tango here → |
The Tango Showroom is open 10 to 4, Monday through Friday, at AmericasMart in Atlanta, Georgia. Come see us! 🌟
AmyFay Chandler
She reads all of this so you don’t have to. Based in Knoxville, TN, AmyFay is a wholesale sales rep for the brands she represents across Tennessee and Kentucky, and she oversees the D2C side for Sweet Tree Jewelry and Caroline B Cook — two of those brands — making sure brick-and-mortar retailers always come first. She writes Weekly Retail Tidbits (now in its 265th issue) because she’s living the same questions her retail customers are living, and figures things out alongside them. Her whole project: helping independent retailers stay human while the rest of the industry tries to automate them away.
Also from AmyFay
Two of the brands I represent run their D2C side through me, with brick-and-mortar partners prioritized at every step:
- Sweet Tree Jewelry — school-spirit polymer-clay earrings
- Caroline B Cook — children’s books (the Virtue Series, Church Kitty)
Wholesale questions? [email protected]
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