Just in Time

At the end of every day, just before I total out the cash register, I try to make a guess about how much I made. Over the years, I've gotten pretty good at it.

Lately, I seem to be overestimating the sales total by about 30%.

I feel as though I've had plenty of activity, lots of transactions. I'm plenty tired.

But the totals aren't quite as good as I expect.

Looking back over the day, I realize that I had quite a few transactions that felt like sales, but somehow never really became sales, either because they were aborted, or because the person bought less than he originally intended, or because I just worked harder for the sale I did get.

Over the years, I've often kept a customer count. Checking off each person that walked in the door. I could compare to previous years.

I haven't done that for awhile, and nothing is more unreliable than estimating customer counts in hindsight -- a couple of boisterous customers can seem like dozens, and a bunch of quiet customers can seem to be ghosts.

Still, I do believe my customer count hasn't really diminished all that much.

Which says to me the the customers' buying spirit is alive, but his pocketbook is slender.

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Meanwhile, I seem to be having one of those lucky streaks where the product flow is just right. I'll sell something, only to see it on the next week's invoice (having been ordered months before.)

I know I'm operating on all cylinders when my ordering exactly matches my sales. It's probably a by-product of my being there everyday, and getting a sense of the flow. I've always been really good at estimating quantities and volume. Which is a handy quality when you have a Just In Time ordering system.

With lower volume in sales, I'm not able to reach my minimum shipping standards, so spot shortages tend to develop. Lately, I seem to be avoiding even those.

I spent the weekend in the basement digging out toys that I'd sold, and my toy accumulation, which I thought was out of hand, was winnowed down by half. It seems to me that 1 out of 10 toys are just clunkers, no matter what I do. I don't have choice in the case mix, so it's just part of doing toys.

But lately, some of the clunkers have become old and rare enough to actually sell.

I've got a saying, everything sells eventually.

I'm resistant to blow-out sales -- I'm a blow-out sale buyer, not a seller.
But I've noticed a couple of toy lines that I simply have too much of, so I'm going to start offering them at half off to people, on an individual basis until I have a couple of each left.

Good toys, too. Star Trek, Star Gate, the Big Lubowski.

The two overstocks I'll probably always have are the boxes and boxes of semi-star cards, and the boxes and boxes of back-issue comics. But -- I've always operated with an instinct of what I think will happen in the future, and I am convinced that these are going to prove useful at some point.

If not, they'll be passed on to the next owner, or blown out in an huge clearance sale at the end of my career.