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Retail Buying
Notes without taking into account the costs of stockholding investment. Weeks cover tells us how
effectively we turned our stock without informing us about relative profitability.
Lab Exercise Go to website www.citeman.com/9078-evaluating-merchandise-
performance.html and collect more information on evaluating merchandise performance
Self Assessment
Fill in the blanks:
11. Merchandise budget plans are concerned with the ........................ of merchandise ranges,
rather than the control of the physical number of items.
12. For any retailer (of any size) it is vital that a ........................ is achieved between the amount
of money going out of a business to pay for supplies of stock, and money coming into the
business from sales to customers.
13. A merchandise budget plan is ........................ to accomplish without the benefit of previous
experience and internal records; however, relying on historical data alone can lead a
buyer or product manager into repeating previous mistakes, including missed
opportunities.
14. The first step of the plan is a realistic ........................
15. The time period for the plan may vary according to the ........................ of the retail business.
Case Study Retail Purchasing Solution by ATS
his retail organisation came to Above the Standard Procurement (ATS) Group®,
Inc. from a call. On ATS initial visit with the client, we listened to their need, what
Tthey wanted to do, their status, they asked us questions, and we asked them about
their pain, challenges, and where they wanted to go. From our assessment of their 12-
month spend, management style, warehousing, logistics, and probing questions about
how they wanted to centralize procurement, we concluded that their need was greater
than what they shared with us.
We designed an outlined of needs assessment and submitted this to them sharing some of
our potential solutions based on what they shared and what we saw. Some of these areas
included:
1. The organization had no centralized purchasing department;
2. Buyers were ordering from vendors with no guidelines at more than 200 locations;
3. Their Purchase Requisitions and Purchase Orders were not integrated with finance
and the central office;
4. They did not have any Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for finance, procurement,
and shipping/receiving;
5. They did not have a proactive department communicating with more than 200
convenience stores about the needed goods and services supply;
Contd...
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