What Are QR Codes And How Can They Be Used In Your Fashion Business

What are QR codes? Well, they’re similar to the barcodes used by retailers to track inventory and price products at the point of sale. The main difference between the two is the amount of data they can communicate. Traditional barcodes which I’m sure you’re familiar with use vertical lines and can only hold up to 20 digits, whereas QR codes are two-dimensional (2D) and can hold much more information.

When a customer scans or reads a QR code with their iPhone, Android or other camera-enabled Smartphone, the phone can automatically:

• Be linked to a web page (for your shop, or fashion business)
• Activate a number of phone functions including email, messaging or SMS
• Directed to an online video (Youtube, etc)
• Display prices or other data about a product, etc

Really it makes it EASIER for a customer (or potential customer) to obtain further information about a product – WITHOUT having to enter in information (e.g. your website address). It’s a good fashion marketing and sales tool.

I’ve recently seen a big goods retailer use QR codes as a ‘teaser’ for advertised specials. So it will be interesting to keep tabs on the varied (and creative) uses for QR codes in fashion retailing and business.

Fashion Retail Sales Slowdown Australia-wide

Consistent with the emails and phone calls we receive from fashion retailers all over Australia is this last weekend photo in the Weekend Australian (30-31 July 2011).

"Kira Stutton has seen a steep decline in sales figures for the shop she manages in Adelaide."

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has confirmed consumers are saving more and spending less. I believe many fashion retailers became lazy and complacent with their marketing over the ‘boom’ years and now as store traffic has declined they are feeling the pinch. The need for good (if not, great) fashion marketing is more important than ever to bring customers into your store!

Photo source: Weekend Australian (30-31 July 2011)

You Need Deep Pockets Using This Type Of Fashion Advertising

This is a classic example of the "image" style of fashion advertising which I saw in a magazine recently…

Why do I say you need deep pockets to run this fashion advertisement? Someone has paid a large sum of money $1,000 or more to run this advertisement to ‘brand’ their clothing label and fashion business. This "image" style of advertising, unless run frequently (at a significant cost), often will not have an impact to the sales of the fashion business. Deep pockets = lots of money wasted … ouch!

Loss Of Store Traffic – Don’t Let This Happen To Your Fashion Business!

I’ve been saying it for years… when it comes to fashion business marketing (and any other retail store for that matter) – you can’t simply rely on local walk-by or drive-by traffic. You are putting yourself at the mercy of the local conditions – car park changes, local council works, nearby building works, etc.

Here’s proof… have a read of this article in The West Australian newspaper this week…. One retailer has lost his franchise business, others are running at a loss and all had to lay off staff and reduce hours. We certainly feel for these business owners… not a nice thing to happen… but it does unfortuntely.

Retailing requires smarter thinking – that’s why you have to look at other ways (strategies) to market and deliver your products to consumers.

Fashion Retailer Sees The Value In Email Marketing – $4,143 In Sales From One Promotion!

Jewels Armstrong Owner, clothing retail business, Morley, WA.

"We have been in business for over 35 years and we managed to obtain a good sized customer list of postal addresses. The much smaller list was a collection of email addresses which we didn’t use very often." "Mark Fregnan from Kinetic Media & Marketing approached us and said that we would still get a good response from that smaller and older email list." "Mark and his graphic designer created a February sale promotion which brought in $4,143 in sales which we were very happy about. Since then we have been keen to add in fresh email addresses and we engaged Kinetic Media & Marketing to help us with our marketing on a monthly basis." February 2010

Will Mobile Phone Shopping Affect Fashion Retailing & Marketing?

What do you think about the above article from the Wall St Journal? It’s an important shopping trends not only for US consumers but for Australian shoppers as well.

Fashion retailers, importers, designers, wholesalers, manufacturers and anyone that sells a fashion ‘product’ will be affected by the growing trend towards researching and even purchasing fashion online.
Once wary and shy consumers are now experienced online consumers by the use of ebay, Google, Gumtree and even Facebook.

Whilst many traditional brick’s'morter fashion retailers look at online shopping as a possible way to reduce their overheads (offering more stock without increasing floor space and reducing staff costs) it means they are now competing even more.

Whilst fashion retailing is less exposed to the move to online shopping due to the need for consumers to ‘try-it-on’ – certain fashion merchandise and products could be – such as shoes, bags, belts, hats, jewellery and so on.

Fashion marketing, branding and the retail experience for the customer has to be even better so that consumers WANT to make the trip to a retail store. This factor has become more and more important and may mean the difference between success or failure in fashion retailing.

Gerry Harvey, You and Online Shopping

Wow, what a big controversy recently in Australia about online retailing and whether people should pay GST when ordering online from overseas suppliers. Big heavy weight retailers like Gerry Harvey from Harvey Norman and others claim that they are at a disadvantage because people can buy online (overseas) and not pay GST. How would the trend in overseas (online) purchases affect FASHION retailers? I still firmly believe the overall trend is still in the (physical store) fashion retailer’s favour.

Here’s my list of the advantages and disadvantages for the CONSUMER when buying FASHION jewellery, footwear and clothing online…

	FASHION RETAIL STORE	ONLINE RETAILER
Ability to try on the item / view the item	Yes. I believe this is one of the most important reasons why people visit stores. We all know that the actual size of clothing or footwear varies between brands and even by date of manufacture. The ‘cut’ can also make a huge difference.	We ‘hope’ we’ve ordered the right size. Even with jewellery – it can look great in the photo but disappointing in real-life.
Quality #1	We can examine the particular ‘item’ before we buy it and take it home.	The item may arrive damaged or was damaged at manufacture or somewhere along the distribution channel.
Quality #2	We can ‘see’ and feel the quality of the item before we purchase it	The photo may differ to the real-life item
Service	Varies – some staff at certain fashion stores have good product knowledge and some don’t. Sometimes you get friendly, prompt service and sometimes you don’t.	May offer more information on their website about the item. Personal service not available.
Availability	If it’s in store, we can buy it and take it home straight away – instant gratification.	May take 1-3 weeks for delivery
Price	A fashion retailer has higher overheads – usually high rent and staff expenses, so this is built into the price of what we pay.	Usually lower. No GST for items under $1,000 (overseas orders only). Offset by having to pay for shipping.
Exchange	Some stores offer the option to exchange items if they are not worn.	Usually no exchange is allowed. Besides, you have to pay shipping to send the item back.

 

Out this list of products, the ones that I feel will be mostly affected by the trend to online shopping (in descending order) are:

1. Bags (most likely to be purchased online)
2. Jewellery
3. Footwear
4. Clothing

Sure, some ‘sales’ may be lost to online shopping but when it comes to FASHION jewellery, footwear and clothing – most consumers understand the benefits of buying locally.

Let me know that you think?

What To Do If Your Fashion Retail Sales Are Down

The GFC and the rising interest rate cycle has certainly affected retail sales in the past two years.

However, certain clever retailers have been able to leverage their fashion marketing and branding to maintain their revenue and even grow during this time. For the rest – recent times have been challenging. So let’s examine what is the role of the fashion store owner.

What NOT to do if your fashion store is quiet I was contacted by a fashion marketing newsletter subscriber (a store owner) recently who said this (word for word…) I know – it’s incredible… …."I’m finding that we do not have time to read the ideas let alone implement them…"

I also had on my computer one of the original emails from this particular store owner – here is the important excerpt:

We own two clothing stores and have been in business for over 6 years. Although we haven’t made a profit in those 6 years! Our major goal, of course, is to turn a profit.

Yes, incredible. This owner says they don’t have time to implement our Smart Fashion Marketing strategies (actually proven to work – not theory), yet confess to spending 100% of her time on SHOPKEEPING ACTIVITIES!

This is real important – if you are fashion retail store… are you in the shopkeeping business or in the business of marketing of your store and brand?

I hope you answered MARKETING!

Absolutely – at least 4 hours a week of your time should be devoted to marketing, promotion and branding activities. It will only cost you $80 or so to free up those 4 hours (i.e. you pay a casual to do your shopkeeping work).

It’s YOUR role as the retail store owner to WORK ON your marketing and branding – no one else you employ will have the passion about your business that you do (you can, of course, leverage your time by utilising the services of a marketing house like ours).

Remember – you have to think like a marketer, and hand most of your shopkeeping activities to staff if you want to enjoy healthly profits and see your fashion store(s) grow!

Fashion Retailing Meets The Titanic

I get correspondence from a surprising number of fashion retailers who own smaller stores where the annual sales revenue is ‘stuck’ at $200k, $300k or even $500k per annum. I’m told that not only have ‘sales growth’ have been stagnant this year, but for many years.

When I write back to ask them what fashion marketing, advertising or customer relationship activities they are working on – I usually get this response…

"Oh, we need to buy some new stock and move our displays around. We should have this all done soon. Maybe we can look at marketing next year."

Talk about "Shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic!"

If 100% of fashion marketing ‘activity’ is stock ordering and moving it around the store… Beware!!! It’s like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

Albert Einstein once said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a difference result".

Yes, buying new stock and making the store displays attractive is important. Good visual merchandising does lead to increased sales. However, it can’t occupy 100% of the fashion business owner’s time.

At least 1-3 hours a week should be devoted to fashion promotion and working on the marketing calendar. You can’t expect store sales growth without this activity. It just won’t happen.

So when I get the ‘deck chair replies’ – I say to myself … "Insanity"!

If you are a fashion retail store owner and do spend 1-3 hours a week on ‘non-titanic’ activities – well done.

If not, or if you don’t know how to break-through to higher sales revenue, contact us about our fashion marketing programs. Not only will you save time and money ‘experimenting’, you will get actual proven and tested promotions ‘ready to roll-out’ for instant sales and more cash in your bank account.

Click here to contact us, or click here to join our entry level Fashion Retail Insiders program for only $47 per month.

Does Facebook Own Your Fashion Retail Business?

"I want to save money on marketing and just use Facebook instead" – was the incredulous reply to a conversion I had with a Fashion Retailer recently. The reason I was so amazed at the response from this retail store owner was not the fact that he was using Facebook to market his business – actually I recommend fashion retailers to ADD Facebook to their marketing mix; but that the store owner wanted to rely on Facebook marketing exclusively!

Facebook and Facebook fans are a great way to market your fashion business – but it’s not your customer database!

Facebook is a third-party company. The list of people (fans) are CONNECTIONS developed within the Facebook environment.

However, a Facebook account is not a retail store customer database. You don’t own a Facebook list – the Facebook company does.

When you want to communicate to a certain segment of your customers or find out how much they spent – Facebook can’t help you. You need to have your own customer database linked to sales history. That way you can be much more effective with your fashion marketing and achieve MORE SALES.

And as I’ve mentioned before, a customer database and the relationship with those customers is one of the most important assets in a business. It adds a substantial amount to your business goodwill.

SUMMARY : Add Facebook to your marketing mix, but it isn’t a replacement for a good customer list. Facebook is a complementary medium, use it to further promote your fashion store.

By the way, if you don’t have access to a good customer marketing system – Click here to test drive our Lifetime Customer Program (included in the Fashion Retail Insiders membership).

Getting Good Results From Your Fashion Advertising

Having a quiet week? Want to bring in more store traffic – right now?

Good, consistent store traffic year round is the holy grail of fashion retailing. There’s no point spending money on good stock, hiring the best sales staff, having the nicest store with the best customer service if people don’t come in. Ensuring regular people traffic is one of the major challenges for most fashion retailers.

Our Fashion Retail Insiders know the twelve (12) specific ways to bring in more traffic to a fashion store and they understand the specific tactics that make them successful. Many of the twelve traffic strategies will be familiar to you, like … print media advertising, internet fashion advertising, good building signage, referral programs, and so on…

However, in order to get a good result from any fashion advertising or marketing campaign, a specific tactic or marketing message, is required.

For many smaller retailers especially (and larger fashion retailers too), the focus needs to be on generating a customer. Yes, absolutely branding is important, but if it’s the sole message in the advertisement, it will be a costly expense for the retailer – as we say in the marketing game – "you need deep pockets". A better way, is to employ a marketing message that brings in paying customers AND builds your brand at the same time. That way your fashion advertising and marketing will pay for itself.

Take for example; Fashion Retail Insider  Gill from John’s Shoe Store. Gill took one of our designs and tested a very small advertisement in the local community newspaper – it brought in $1,382.70. Granted it was a very small advertisement and dollar sale, but you can see the potential of running a similar advert weekly. i.e. $1,382.70 x 52 weeks is $71,900.

I’m sure adding almost $72,000 in annual revenue would be welcome by any fashion retailer.

Not only is the revenue important, but see what else happens :

• 12 new customers were introduced to the business (from one week) – that would be 624 new customers a year. Those customers would return to make additional purchases and refer other people to the store, and,
• The retail store would achieve brand awareness with the readers of the local community newspaper.

And that’s a good result from fashion advertising!

Why Oh Why Are We Not Meeting Our Fashion Sales Targets?

I had a call this week from a fashion store owner who doesn’t work in the store himself (it’s under management). He was frustrated with the low numbers of paying customers even after placing "Up to 75% off" signs on the store windows. This business owner was convinced that the shopping centre was doing a lousy job of attracting people.

But you see, there are two aspects to obtaining paying customers… 1) Store traffic and, 2) Sales conversion.

I had a feeling that the staff weren’t doing such a good job of selling. The only way to find out is to measure TRAFFIC AND SALES. From that the sales conversion can be worked out.

For most fashion retailers the sales conversion rate will be between 10% to 40%. That is, out of 10 people that walk-in, one to four will buy.

Whoa, I bet you’re telling me your sales conversion is much higher. Okay, prove it!

Below is a sample store browsers chart. Rule a single page with 6 columns and mark one line for each person that walks into the store every day over one week (count a couple and families as one person).

Then check your sales numbers at the end of the week (from your POS or till). Divide # sales / # browsers and multiply by 100. That’s your conversion as a percentage.

Then you’ll know if your staff are doing a good job or not. If your conversion is below 10% you’ve got a BIG problem!

P.S. The more accurate way of obtaining your store traffic numbers is to install an automatic people counter – I have discussed this on a previous post on this website.

When Is The Right Time To Open Your Next Fashion Retail Store? Part 2

I know, I know – you’re itching to open your next fashion retail store.

If your next store is store number 3 (or more) – I reckon you must have created a very good store opening process, so I would say go for it.

However, if it’s your second store – BEWARE – there are pitfalls.

Many single store owners are tempted to open a second store because the first fashion retail store may not be performing that well and an opportunity arises to have another store in perhaps a better location. Watch out - not only could this be a money trap, it can be a time trap as well.

I’ve personally met ‘stressed-out’ fashion retailers who try very hard to keep two stores profitable, by cutting staff time and working unrealistic hours, running back and forth between the two retail outlets. What often happens (and I’ve heard this first hand on the telephone from these poor retailers) is that they will finally close one store and be stuck with a big financial loss, excess stock, and excess store fittings. This extra burden puts more pressure on the cash-flow of the remaining store and often the retailer will close that store too, and be out-of-business!

It’s a heart-breaking situation, but unfortunately all too common in the fashion business world.

Here’s how to avoid that situation…

Guidelines for opening your second fashion retail store

Your single store MUST be able to stand on it’s own. That is, the store needs be profitable by being staffed without you being there. That is, your full-time staff member(s) and casuals cover 100% of the store hours. Another way to look at it – could you take three months off and still have an open store when you got back?

If not, please don’t open that second store – you’re not ready yet!

When you open your second store, you’ll need to give it your full attention for perhaps several months – to get everything right so it’s a profitable store too – you can’t be worrying about your original shop.

To have a fashion retail store that is profitable without you requires good marketing systems, good sales systems and good procedures for the staff to follow. Not only will this information make your first store very profitable, it will essentially form the basis of a ‘cookie-cutter’ system which will allow you not only to open a second store, but many others too.

For more information on good fashion marketing take a look at our FREE mini-course (click here).

When Is The Right Time To Open Your Next Fashion Retail Store? Part 1

Oh boy, this is literally the million-dollar question.

When it comes down to it, there is only so much sales revenue and profit you can generate from one fashion retail store. You are usually limited by floor space and how much stock you can display.

However, you can generate a lot more revenue from one store than you might think. I love this real-life business story…

“Tom O’Toole turned a failing little bakery in an isolated and dying Australian country town (Beechworth, VIC) with a population of 3,000 into a company with an annual turnover in excess of $12 million, serving over one million customers per year.” “A bakery that has become one of the highest earning single bakery retailers in Australian history.”

So how do you grow your revenue in your existing fashion store. Again, in a nutshell, it comes down to good branding and fashion marketing, good products and great customer service.

You may have read or heard of my comments about branding – essentially I subscribe to the Dan Kennedy marketing rule… “Branding should be a by-product of good marketing”.

In other words, advertising or marketing that generates customers at a profit and pays itself – should always be your primary goal. We’ll discuss this further at another time.

So, to summarise – you don’t always need to open that next store, right now. You can squeeze out a lot more profit out of the store(s) you own already. But, if you’re still thinking about that new fashion store – I’ll go through on my next post some very important things you’ll need to consider before you put down a deposit on that new lease. Watch this space.

5 Main Ways To Make More Money In Your Fashion Business!

So many fashion store owners get caught up in a lot of staff and stock management "activities" and forget this one simple principle. There are only five ways to grow your fashion business:

Get more store traffic (get more). Have more browsers become paying customers (convert more). Get customers to buy more items or purchase higher priced ticket items on each visit (spend more). Get your regular or existing customers come back more often (visit more). Make more money out of each product line, improve your margins and minimise unnecessary expenses. (make more) We call these the 5 Profit Centres in a retail store!

Yes, absolutely ‘Stock Management’ is very important to fashion retail store success, but it cannot be the only focus. Here’s how you can MAKE MORE MONEY using the 5 Profit Centres…

Profit Centre #1) Get more people into your store (thats store browsers) – preferably at a lower cost. Even if your conversion to a paying customer remained exactly the same, more store traffic equals more sales. The ‘challenge’ is to find low cost methods to increase store traffic.

Good strategies include advertising, mailbox flyers, fashion shows, referral programs, special events, signage and so on. Look in the ‘new customer marketing’ section in this member’s area for more information and examples.

Profit Centre #2) Get more people to buy. Again, if you improved nothing else but had more store browsers convert to paying customers, you’ll increase the total sales. Good strategies include improvements to store layout, staff training, product placement, signage, pricing and so on.

Profit Centre #3) Get customers to spend more on each visit (this is called the average sale or average cheque). There are literally dozens of strategies to get customers to spend more… up-sells, cross-sells, point-of-sale displays and so on.

Profit Centre #4) Get customers back more often. Utilise our customer marketing services at Kinetic Media & Marketing – we use post, SMS and email to communicate to your customers.

Profit Centre #5) Improve your margins. What’s your gross margin? Your mark-up? Your cost of goods? What’s the relationship between your turnover to staff wages? What are you best selling items? What items have the largest profit margin? How can you sell more of them? What’s the break-down of expenses? Is there a blow-out in one area? How much old stock are you carrying? How well does your store perform again the Australian statistics for retailing?

These are some of the many sub-areas you can look at to improve your margins.

By taking time to improve those 5 Profit Centres, you’ll see an almost INSTANT improvement to your bottom-line store profit!

Retail Shopping Centre Fashion Advertising

Do you have a retail store located in a shopping centre? If so, I’m sure you’re familiar with the extremely high rent and outgoings bill you receive every month. Besides the building and services component – a portion of your monthly fee to the shopping centre company also covers centre promotion and advertising. It’s the shopping centre’s role to bring in people so they can charge the retailer a fee for the space. Nothing new with that. However, it’s actually a good idea to know how much of your annual rent is attributed to receiving store traffic (browsers and customers).

Let say you have a 30m2 store. Figure 1 : Your current shopping centre rent (let’s use $50,000 per annum for simpicity). Figure 2 : The cost of renting a 30m2 office in a street in the back lots of an industrial area (let’s say it costs $15,000 per annum). The difference $35,000, is the annual cost paid for the ‘better’ location (shopping centre v.s. back lots).

Some retailers choose to have a store located in a quieter street location and not in a shopping centre, but in order to create the same revenue, much more money needs to be spent on fashion advertising.

i.e. Shopping Centre = high rent, lower individual store fashion advertising expenses.

Quiet location = lower rent, higher individual store fashion advertising expenses (in order to produce a similar annual revenue).

There is aways that trade-off. Whether one option is better or not for your store really comes down to your level of experience in fashion retailing, your brand and sales system.

Improving Retail Store Traffic : How Many Browsers & Customers?

When it comes to finding out how effective your fashion advertising is (and even the advertising of the shopping centre management – if this applies to you) in bringing people into your store, you’ll need to have a system to measure STORE TRAFFIC.

Even if you don’t advertise – you’ll need to understand which days of the week and which months are your quiet times and which are your busy times.

Simply looking at your retail store sales figures only tells you half the story – how many people made purchases, not how many people came in.

The best way to find out how many people came in is to install a store traffic counter across the entry (or entries to your store). Armed with this information, you can create a more effective marketing calendar and fashion business strategy.

Here’s a small list of some of the benefits of having an automated store traffic counter…

• Be able to monitor how effective your advertising and marketing promotions are.
• To be able determine your sales conversion.
• Know whether you are generating enough store traffic to ensure target sales revenue.
• Ensure you have enough staff during peak times and be able to reduce staff at quiet times.

Closely monitoring your store traffic will allow you to refine your marketing and even reduce money wasted on ineffective marketing campaigns! IMPLEMENTATION : You can get electronic store counters from ‘Total Count’ in Melbourne. This is their web site address : www.totalcount.com.au

They have inexpensive counters and all the way up to advanced models. And before you ask. No, I don’t get a commission by recommending them. Our clients have been using the counters from Total Count and they have been reliable.

THE KEY POINT : You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Automated systems work best because they don’t rely on humans – if you don’t have a store traffic counter – now is a great time to get one!

Fashion Industry Contacts – Associations

I recently received an email request for assistance with finding fashion industry contacts. My advice was to visit a number of Australian association web sites. After sending the reply email, I thought other people may benefit from a list of Australian associations involved with fashion. So here they are. P.S. If you come across any others or have updated information please make a comment on this page and we’ll update our list.

Fashion Industry Association List. Dated (23rd April 2010).

Australian Fashion Council (AFC)
www.australianfashioncouncil.com

Council of Textile and Fashion Industries of Australia Limited (TFIA)
www.tfia.com.au

National Retail Association (NRA)
www.nra.net.au
NRA has a lot of fashion retailers

The Retailers Association (TRA) – now called United Retail Federation

United Retail Federation
www.unitedretailfederation.com.au
Membership Australia-wide.

Australian Retailers Association (ARA)
www.retail.org.au

Fashion Technicians Association of Australia (FTAA)
www.ftaa.com.au

Will A Web Site Make You More Money For Your Fashion Business?

I’m sure every fashion retailer would be in favour of having a web site for their business – but not every retailer actually has one. Why is that?

As always, I believe the question comes down to cost and return-on-investment (ROI). Websites aren’t cheap. There is a cost to designing an unique site and the hours of graphic and web programming involved. In order to figure out the return-on-investment for a fashion retailer, let’s look at the some of the benefits of having a good website :

• 24 / 7 convenience : A customer or a potential new customer can browse your website to look at the latest styles and fashions you have available.
• Customer assistance : A customer or a potential new customer can look up your contact or location details. They could view the outside of your store, it’s location on a Google map, or find what your opening hours are.
• Mailing list : A customer or a potential new customer can sign up for your fashion eNewsletter which is a great strategy for increasing sales.
• Web search : A potential new customer who has never heard about your retail store before comes across your website after a search for a particular brand.
• Recommendation :A friend of a potential new customer recommends your store and that person visits your web site to find out more.
• Branding : If you are seeking to build your brand, a good web site will assist in the brand-awareness process.
• Publicity : Someone browsing the internet, comes across some news or information about your store on another site and then visits your website.
• Credibility : A good retail web site lends credibility to the business.
• Online Advertising option : A web site is a requirement for online fashion advertising. Online advertising is an effective way to bring more customers to your business.
• Online sales : Generate sales 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. People visit your site and make a purchase. Generally speaking, online sales are better suited to fashion items like jewellery, footwear and accessories. But, clothing can be sold too.

I’m sure you’re now impressed with some of the major benefits of having a fashion store web site, but in order to maximise those benefits the web site needs to be designed in a certain way. Keep an eye out for my next post…

Should You Let Your Accountant Run Your Fashion Store?

I usually have several conversations a day with fashion retailers… existing clients and people enquiring about our marketing services. One such conversation with a prospect business (not a client) last week (early March 2010) was with an owner of a small fashion store who also managed an accounting firm with his wife. One of first things he said (I won’t mention his real name – but let’s call him Peter) … was "The store isn’t doing well". Peter’s comments weren’t anything new… I’ve been hearing about slow retail sales from mid-January this year (2010).

When Peter said "The store isn’t doing well", to be honest, I was a little annoyed. Peter and his wife had contacted me in January I had given them one particular strategy to increase sales. Guess what? That’s right, Peter didn’t implement it at all. Two months later he calls to tell me how lousy sales are. Now this particular strategy had zero cost – yep … zero cost! Peter’s reason for not implementing the strategy was…. drum roll … "…we were too busy...". Yes, too busy losing money.

Don’t get me wrong, I have good friends who are accountants, but an accountant’s mindset about running a business … is 1) Financial management, and 2) Cost cutting.

Accountants don’t know much about marketing and sales – they foolishly see it as an expense rather than an investment. That’s why big businesses have an accounting department separate to the marketing and sales department. You and I, as entrepreneurs, value accountants for 1) Minimising tax, 2) Preparing accounting statements and keeping the ATO happy, 3) Giving advice about gearing and balance sheets – that’s it – don’t ask an accountant if you should spend more money on marketing!

If you, or anyone else in fashion retailing, is hurting (financially) make fashion marketing and sales your top priority.

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