Insoles

We called Scott to have him tell us about his success.

Tell us about your store.

Scott: We specialize in athletic shoes such as Nike, Fila and Avias, Asics and New Balance. We also do a lot of the outdoor casuals such as Rockport, Technica, HH Brown, Eastland, Danner and Ecco. We try to make each area of the store into smaller concepts stores. For example, we have a little track area near to the running shoes. Then we have sections with baseball, basketball and hiking themes. Customers really seem to like the idea. Two of my stores are located in closed malls and two of my stores are located in strip malls.

What is your typical customer like?
Scott: It really varies from store to store. Each store has a very different personality to it. The store that I mostly work at in Salt Lake City has upper end customers who comprise 70-plus percent of my running shoe business. Generally, the customer here is thirty to forty years old, very active and affluent. So this is a particularly good location for that part of the business. My other three stores cater mostly to kids from 13-18 and they focus on the basketball, hiking and cross training products.

What did you do before Retail Pro for point of sale and inventory control?
Scott: Looked for point of sale and inventory systems! I looked for a long time. I probably looked for two and a half years at all the other systems that were available. I just didn't see anything that worked well for shoes, which are a very difficult item to matrix. I just wasn't happy and the systems didn't work like I did. All we had was just a manual system with regular old cash registers and accountants. We stayed with it because we didn't find any system on the market that could perform what we needed-until we found Retail Pro.

Would you say that Retail Pro helped you grow?
Scott: No question about that. I knew I was going to grow and I wanted to expand the four stores. You see, with one store, you go in, work real hard- twelve hours a day, six days a week-and you know what you have in inventory. But once you open the second store, it's impossible. Suddenly, you can't manage either of the stores. So, we had to make the step to computerize. And again, we took a while until we did that because we couldn't find anything that worked until Retail Pro.

How has Retail Pro affected your point of sale?
Scott: It has made it much more efficient. We use it a lot for customer service. When a customer comes in, especially if they had a problem with a product, we can look up their customer history and rapidly handle the difficulty. We use that feature extensively to verify sales and take care of the customers who have bought from us in the past. We can follow the trends of what our customers buy and can tell the ones who didn't buy the goods here to get lost. It's saved us a lot of time and money just in that respect. Plus, we use the mailing features quite a bit. It's very simple to send out thank you letters. Each Monday I print up labels from our customer file for the prior weeks purchases and send them a note. They are usually something simple like: "Dear Customer, Thank you for your business," and I sign each letter personally. I've had a lot of customers comment on these letter and feel it adds a personal touch.

What impact has Retail Pro had on inventory control?
Scott: We have some now!! Previously, it was a matter of watching the inventory and figuring it out manually. Now we know which items are moving slowly and which items are moving fast. We can return the items that are moving slowly and put the dollars where they need to go-into the faster moving items. It's a way to keep control of categories. When you don't have a system like Retail Pro, you make assumptions and hope they are right. When you put in Retail Pro, you know exactly what is selling and what isn't.

What do you find is the most useful aspect of Retail Pro?
Scott: Wow, there's a lot that we really appreciate-it's hard to say, but I guess special orders and layaway and the inventory and reporting features are the key ones. I'm able to look up inventory at other stores, total on-hand, total on-order and so forth. It makes shopping much easier for the customer and results in a lot more sales because you can see what is in stock in each store. If we're out of stock in one store we can transfer it and get the sale. Or we can see that the item is on order and can tell the customer the date that it's coming and make the sale in the near future.

What about your employees, do they like having Retail Pro?
Scott: With 16 employees, it is very important to have a software package that they can learn and that doesn't make their jobs more complicated. Retail Pro is extremely easy to learn. In the four years, I've probably had one employee that has had any difficulty at all- and that person had a hard time spelling his name! It's been very, very easy to teach because an employee can learn any part of Retail Pro and, because the program is consistent throughout, the employee can usually pick up the rest of the program without much effort. Employees are much more efficient with Retail Pro than without.