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Business Pulse: Keeping Tabs on Inventory, Or Not
More than a quarter of jewelers said in a recent survey that they don’t have a point-of-sale system for tracking inventory in their store.
2016 or 1916? Slightly more than a quarter of jewelers who took the recent JA/National Jeweler survey on inventory reported that they do not have a point-of-sale system in their store that tracks inventory.
New York--Jewelers of America/National Jeweler’s latest poll shows that despite the fact that we live in an age where a pocket-sized device can handle almost all of our computing needs, there are still jewelers who keep track of their inventory manually.
In the Business Pulse poll for March/April, completed by 182 respondents, retailers were asked if they use a point-of-sale system to track inventory in their store. Seventy-three percent of survey-takers answered yes while the remaining 27 percent said no.
(Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.)
When those without an inventory tracking system were asked how they kept tabs on all the jewelry in their store, many noted they did so the “old-fashioned way,” meaning by hand, while others were a little bit more specific.
“Unfortunately, just my brain,” wrote one respondent.
Another noted simply that they kept track of their inventory “badly.”
Among those who do have a point-of-sale system for inventory tracking, The Edge was the one the majority of poll-takers said they used. Others systems that received multiple mentions included Jewelry Shopkeeper, QuickBooks and WinJewel.
The survey also showed that inventory turn remains a problem, and that many jewelers are carrying as much aged inventory as they are buying new stock every year.
The greatest percentage of respondents (25 percent) reported spending $50,000 to $100,000 a year on inventory, and that same range also was the most-picked answer when survey-takers were asked how much aged inventory is in their store.
When it comes to inventory turn, the greatest percentage of respondents (31 percent) reported that their inventory turn ratio was less than 1.
Love was in the air?
The survey, conducted March 28 to April 13, also asked respondents about their jewelry store’s performance in February, which would include Valentine’s Day sales.
Nearly half (47 percent) of respondents said that sales were up as compared with February 2015, while 29 percent reported a year-over-year drop in sales.
National Jeweler and Jewelers of America conduct their joint Business and Product Pulse poll monthly, asking jewelers about sales in specific categories as well as other aspects of their business. A total of 182 jewelers completed the Business Pulse poll.
This month’s Product Pulse, of which all of these questions were a part, focused on bridal jewelry.
National Jeweler is a for-profit subsidiary of Jewelers of America, though the two organizations act independently of each other.
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