Retail Math: Understanding the Numbers that Drive Success

A Guide to Understanding Merchandising, Finance, Operations and Loss Prevention Metrics and Strategies

Ratings: 4.85 / 5.00




Description

Retail is an exciting, challenging, and fast-paced career choice.  Merchandising is the engine that drives the business.  The ability to understand merchandising & buying metrics is essential to success and those metrics are covered in great detail here.  This course goes a step further, taking a cross-functional view including store operations, finance, accounting, and loss prevention to explore strategic concepts and the big picture of how the metrics tell a story.  The instructor is known for using well-paced lectures and clear illustrations featuring examples and lessons learned over a decade in leadership roles.  The course is ideal for those who are new to retail or who are experienced but never received an in-depth explanation of the key metrics and strategic concepts.  Additionally this is great knowledge for any recruiter who needs to understand retail terminology in order to effectively interview candidates.


The high level topics include:

  • Merchandising formulas and concepts

  • Pricing strategies explained

  • Loss prevention formulas and concepts

  • Finance & accounting retail relevant topics

  • Store operations key metrics

Course includes downloadable materials, such as visual illustrations of key concepts, a glossary and a 1-page formula cheat sheet.


What you’ll learn:

  • Interpreting margin & markup data and how to improve the related KPI's

  • Identify the components of a price

  • Markdown calculations, types, benefits and risks

  • Analyze the open to buy calculation

  • Understand inventory turns

  • Apply learnings to ask the right questions when presented with merchandising data

  • Shrink calculations and concepts

  • Break-even analysis

  • Introduction to an income statement

  • Comp sales & SG&A expense ratios

  • Operations efficiency metrics

  • How to measure customer perception & behavior

What You Will Learn!

  • Interpret margin & markup data and understand how to improve KPI's
  • Identify the components of a price
  • Markdown calculations, types, benefits and risks
  • Analyze the open-to-buy calculation
  • Understand inventory turns
  • Apply learnings to ask the right questions when presented with merchandising data
  • Shrink calculations and concepts
  • Break-even analysis
  • Introduction to the income statement
  • Comparative sales and SG&A expense ratios
  • Operations efficiency metrics
  • How to measure customer perception and behavior

Who Should Attend!

  • Buyers, assistant buyers, planning & allocations analysts
  • Store operations, loss prevention, retail finance & accounting, inventory control professionals
  • HR recruiters who want to learn frequently used acronyms and terminology
  • Students who are interested in a retail career but want to know more about the inner workings
  • IT technologists who are responsible for designing and maintaining retail software such as POS, merchandising and pricing systems
  • Project managers who are inexperienced in retail concepts
  • Internal and external auditors who want to understand the metrics of retail
  • Any retail professional who wants a broader understanding of KPI's from a cross-functional perspective