In business as in any other endeavours in life, we sometimes have to take the necessary risks to make money. I remember there are times in the course of my work as a merchandising manager, be it in a boutique setting, department store, supermarket or hypermarket banners, I relatively apply the risk-taking instinct in me in doing my budget calculations and purchases. Even to some extent exceeding what has been allocated in my budget.
Don't get me wrong but my instinct tells me to take the calculated, well analyzed approach in my risk-taking. For example, there was a year when the crisis in 2003-2004, business has been slowing down but on the world stage there is the war between the US against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, after figuring the events and the prevailing conditions at that time, it does not take a genius to that social sentiments and peoples awareness are about the war that is going on.
Having had to handle several importations, my immediate boss, the owner and vice-president for merchandising gave me a last minute call the night before my flight going to Xiamen, China. She said to me "Stick to the budget and do not buy anything that is not saleable".
Taking that warning as her way of reminding me that if I do not follow her advice and go beyond my purchase power and budget allotted for the categories I am handling, and if I fail in delivering the target sales for the following sales quarter, I assumed that my head will roll and I could possible be losing my job for neglecting to take her sound advice.
And so during the course of my sourcing of merchandise in China, from Xiamen to Yiwu to Shantou and Chenghai, China. I diligently went through the nitty gritty work of selection of goods, computing the budgets, visualize how each products will be displayed once they arrive in our retail store, I have to remove those that do not fit or has high costing, I test, scrutinize, check every details of a product, see the product information, make sure there are no damages, is not prone to damage during transport shipping etc.
Even for the tedious tasks I am still exceeding my allocated inventory purchase budget by Php 16 million, so I have to reduce again the quantity for purchase of some stock keeping units (SKU), and there are times when the factory would not accept orders that are less than 10 cartons, to this my only resolve is not to buy it at all. At the end of my 2 weeks "buying" spree I am still way above my budget by a fraction of 10 million.
So I said, I am sticking by those purchase, I will just need to fixed the budgetary overdraft once the first few shipments arrive in Manila. 42 container-full of various merchandise have been expected to be shipped to the port of Manila in stages of deliveries. Initially I have to give the go signal for the first 6 containers to be shipped out of China in 2 weeks.
The first six containers has to reach the store shelves within 5 days, thus I have to authorize the receiving department for immediate barcoding and tagging of the goods and must meet the 5 days time-table I have set out for operations to carry out.
I went hands-on in training the salesforce, my front-end staffs that has the day to day interaction with the consumers and listen to their opinions, I have to listen how each customers would react, move, roam around the store selling area. I have to orient them on the new products that have just arrived.
Amazingly, the first 6 containers sold 40% of the inventories within 2 weeks, and so I have to give the go signal for 18 new containers prior to the depletion of the first batch.
In the end, I not only got to stay for the next several years in my job, but that was the year I beat the highest sales ever made in the 27 years of that company's sales history, a whooping Php 175 million.
Did I exceed my budget, i can honestly admit to my boss that I reneged on her advice, but at the end of that meeting, she told me "I don't know how you did it, but from hereon, i trust you know your own judgment, Just rake in as much money as the company needs, You are really a magician".
And so I was called the miracle magician by my peers for being defiant in maintaining the budget, yet was able to hit the highest recorded sales of the company. It has been a very satisfying and humbled me in every way that made my skills in retail more masterful by experience
Don't get me wrong but my instinct tells me to take the calculated, well analyzed approach in my risk-taking. For example, there was a year when the crisis in 2003-2004, business has been slowing down but on the world stage there is the war between the US against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, after figuring the events and the prevailing conditions at that time, it does not take a genius to that social sentiments and peoples awareness are about the war that is going on.
Taking that warning as her way of reminding me that if I do not follow her advice and go beyond my purchase power and budget allotted for the categories I am handling, and if I fail in delivering the target sales for the following sales quarter, I assumed that my head will roll and I could possible be losing my job for neglecting to take her sound advice.
And so during the course of my sourcing of merchandise in China, from Xiamen to Yiwu to Shantou and Chenghai, China. I diligently went through the nitty gritty work of selection of goods, computing the budgets, visualize how each products will be displayed once they arrive in our retail store, I have to remove those that do not fit or has high costing, I test, scrutinize, check every details of a product, see the product information, make sure there are no damages, is not prone to damage during transport shipping etc.
Even for the tedious tasks I am still exceeding my allocated inventory purchase budget by Php 16 million, so I have to reduce again the quantity for purchase of some stock keeping units (SKU), and there are times when the factory would not accept orders that are less than 10 cartons, to this my only resolve is not to buy it at all. At the end of my 2 weeks "buying" spree I am still way above my budget by a fraction of 10 million.
So I said, I am sticking by those purchase, I will just need to fixed the budgetary overdraft once the first few shipments arrive in Manila. 42 container-full of various merchandise have been expected to be shipped to the port of Manila in stages of deliveries. Initially I have to give the go signal for the first 6 containers to be shipped out of China in 2 weeks.
The first six containers has to reach the store shelves within 5 days, thus I have to authorize the receiving department for immediate barcoding and tagging of the goods and must meet the 5 days time-table I have set out for operations to carry out.
I went hands-on in training the salesforce, my front-end staffs that has the day to day interaction with the consumers and listen to their opinions, I have to listen how each customers would react, move, roam around the store selling area. I have to orient them on the new products that have just arrived.
Amazingly, the first 6 containers sold 40% of the inventories within 2 weeks, and so I have to give the go signal for 18 new containers prior to the depletion of the first batch.
In the end, I not only got to stay for the next several years in my job, but that was the year I beat the highest sales ever made in the 27 years of that company's sales history, a whooping Php 175 million.
Did I exceed my budget, i can honestly admit to my boss that I reneged on her advice, but at the end of that meeting, she told me "I don't know how you did it, but from hereon, i trust you know your own judgment, Just rake in as much money as the company needs, You are really a magician".
And so I was called the miracle magician by my peers for being defiant in maintaining the budget, yet was able to hit the highest recorded sales of the company. It has been a very satisfying and humbled me in every way that made my skills in retail more masterful by experience
