The one thing successful newsagency businesses have in common is good business data management. Good business data management starts with meaningful product departments and categories.
Don’t fall asleep! Too often newsagents and other small retailers I speak with roll their eyes at this point and say it’s too hard. Nonsense. You’re lazy if you do not setup and maintain a good department and category structure in your newsagency software.
Departments should be high level: stationery, gifts, cards, plush, magazines, newspapers. No, newspapers and magazines don;t go together. No, art products should not be in stationery. No, gifts should not be part of cards.
Categories – these sit within each department – should be meaningful to you. Do not use suppliers as a category as newsagency software can report separately on suppliers. Use categories to help you understand what is selling. here are two examples:
- Department: Plush. Categories: Funky, traditional, kids, collector.
- Department: Gifts. Categories: Baby, kids, teen, adult, religious, Xmas, home.
- Department: Stationery. Categories: writing inst., tape, glue, stickers, school, office.
Come up with your own, that are meaningful to you. The goal here is to help you easily see in reports from your software what is working. departments and categories report at a high level. Once you see something of interest you can dig deeper in detailed reports.
get this right and you have a foundation in place to grow your business.