In this – the first of a regular column by Postmark’s Mark Janson-Smith, owner of four independent card shops in London – Mark mulls over his sell-through-rates from Valentine’s and Mother’s Day.
Spring is definitely in the air here at Postmark. Even I’ve been bitten by the cleaning bug and finally started clearing out some of the catalogues fighting for space in my office. Mrs PM, who has the luck of sharing the office with me and my mountains of paper, is very happy but I’m not so sure our binmen will feel the same way.
Flipping through them before they are bagged and sent on their way to be pulped, reshaped and reassembled, it’s hard to imagine that only a few months ago their arrival was met with excitement and anticipation, their contents yet to be unleashed on the Postmark customer. We spent hours scanning the contents, looking at samples, working out just the right collection for our big spring hits.
Yet, it’s not always about the products on offer. For me, a huge part of my buying rationale is determined by last year’s sell-through-rates and for occasions like Valentine’s and Easter, with their differential timings every year, this is particularly important as where it lands in a year can make a huge difference.
Take Valentine’s this year. The quality of product was great yet our STR’s were lower than last year. The reason? Monday, specifically Monday 13th February.
February 13th is our busiest day of the year in terms of transactions. In 2016 it landed on a Saturday. For independent suburban businesses like ours this is basically a Valentine’s jackpot with regulars and new customers from the area wandering in on their Saturday amble to buy their Valentine’s card, relaxed, happy in the mood for love.
This year it landed on a Monday. Cue death kneel of romance and a loss of sales for suburban businesses with a much higher proportion of people (men and women, let’s not get sexist here!) being unprepared and grabbing a card on their lunch break or on the way home at a supermarket.
Given that our buying for this year was influenced by last year’s bumper Valentine’s we took a bit of hit. STR’s in 2016 were a meaty 95% while this year it was a bit leaner at 81%.
Now compare this to Mother’s Day, which of course always lands on a Sunday, giving you the Mother’s Day jackpot every year. With a STR of 99% we literally can’t keep up with demand and every year we buy more and sell more.
Are there lessons to be learnt here? Yes most definitely. For me the fact that Valentine’s is set to be a weekday event for the next four years will have an impact on how we buy although I think STR’s will improve the further along the week it moves. Mother’s Day while successful is trickier. As much as you may want to stuff your stockroom getting that balance between too much and too little right is a fine art.
But no matter what or how much you buy, the other key factor in all of this is your nerves. It can be alarming to see so much stock arriving and for many retailers just thinking about how they’re going to shift it all can cause a few jitters. Which is why it’s more important than ever to just steady yourself with the knowledge that sales always come later than think.
For us, looking back at the last few years, over half of our Valentine’s cards sold in the four days before the event whereas for Mother’s Day it was a third (we seem to be a little bit better prepared for the Mums!) and at Christmas we generally find the majority of our stock (excluding packs and advents) disappearing off our shelves in the two weeks before the big day.
Buying isn’t an art but it’s definitely something you never stop learning, and as for the catalogues well they may give my binmen a hernia but they remain an integral (if heavy) part of the process.
Postmark is an award-winning independent card retailer based in London. Run by Mark and Leona Janson-Smith they currently have four Postmark shops in south and west London as well as an online shop at www.postmarkonline.co.uk
