Today I celebrate my 5th year in the retailing business which began in a small town construction and hardware store, where my primary task is to prepare purchase order, negotiate and select hardware spare parts and construction materials, prepare the weekly collectibles from valued clients.
I remember having this thick leather bound black book that contains all the names of our valued customers who would normally come and buy either their trucking and motorpool spare part needs, purchase cement, plywood boards, enamel paints even just a few grams of construction nails.
I have always fancy to learn all about what the typical hardware stores are like, growing up in a community seeing the mainstream chinese family either has a hardware store or a grocery store. I choose to be immerse with the former to begin my journey in the whole world of business most especially retailing business.
What differentiates this first hands on job with my succeeding jobs is that, in a regular business, our prices are dictated by customer relationships. We do not have a fixed(set in stone pricing), the price we give our buyers depends primarily if they are new customers, they are given the regular price, a mark up of 30% to 80%, as for our valued regular clients, who normally would ask for discounts, we can go as low as having 10%-15% margin. So primarily our pricing mechanism is dictated by relationships.
Initially, I've got to learn a whole set of business acumen, negotiation and even hands-on learning of the various merchandise, there was even a time when I have to go underneath a customers vehicle just to check their car muffler if it has a leak on it. On my own, I thought, I would want to learn everything I have to learn while I'm working at this construction and hardware store, as I would only have to past this way once in my life, if someday I get lucky enough and able to set up my own business, who knows I might be in the same hardware business afterall.
After just a brief stay in my first retail job, I got a job offer from a bigger retailer, this time a construction materials depot which I have to be the Store Manager managing the paints, tiles, electrical, construction materials, furnitures even the doorknobs, nails and screws. Here I learned to manage people, I acquired the customer service skills. It was also where I encountered the most vicious amongst customer complaints that one time, a customer came and poked a gun at my face since he purchase from the previous store manager who quit the job and still wasn't able to get the water tanks he needs for his house. As shocking as it may be to some, but I took it up with much courage to talk sense into him and luckily the customer who is a military official was pacified and got his full-refund.
It was also as a Store supervisor for the construction depot that I learned how to climb display gondolas to check for stacks of inventories on storage atop our selling shelves. I learned to give motivational sales talk to my sales crew to boost their moral at work and even act as their social therapist whenever they feel downtrodden from so many family and work troubles. I also learned to come up with sales training techniques to improve the target sales of the team.
After a year, I got a job offer to be a merchandise buyer for a bigger mall, specifically for their department store, to which I have no idea whatsoever is the task of being in merchandising is all about since my first two jobs are store operation related.
I was given 3 weeks to learn everything about the store inventories, clean up the mess, dispose damage merchandise, clean up the inventory system, learn all about Microsoft Inventory System, JDA System, SAP System and even the old-school way of doing inventory, the index card compilation. It was a juggling task to negotiate with vendors, sellers, create purchase order, reviewing inventories and looking for missing inventories.
I even have to personally take the initiative to work beyond office hours, spend the weekend in the office or in the store back-end to clean up the store mess. I inherited a troubled department that only sells 1.3M each month during the regular season and 2.5M on a peak month. I have an overstocked inventories of 14 months(the normal carrying inventory is supposed to be 2.5 or 3 months of the target sales).
With speed and my willingness to learn, improve and prove my worth that I can improve a troubled department, in modesty, I was able to free up alot of inventories, improved the merchandise mix that translated to an improved sales. On my third month on the job, I hit the target sales for the month and has consistently grown the department. Its now my 2 years and 8 months of handling this department and my monthly target is now pegged at 8M for a regular month and last years peak season, I hitted a staggering sales of 76M, which I supposed makes my boss extremely happy. She even called me a "Magician", I really don't know why.
I hope to be able to continually linger and still outpaced the target sales in the succeeding years ahead.
