Thrift Rainmakers

Profit, or not, often hinges on one job

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

Staying in business often hinges on how well labor expenses are invested. 

Production is how much gets done. Productivity is how efficiently things get done. Or how much value is being added for the labor investment?

In thrift, choosing and preparing goods to go to the sales floor, will make or break a store. High-performing producers can move the needle more and faster than almost anyone else in a store. 

How to set production staff up for success?

Focus - Let producers be producers. Not backup cashiers, backup donation attendants, merchandisers, maintenance. Invest all of your budgeted production hours in, yes, production. 

The secret sauce of thrift retail is a steady flow of fresh goods moving to the sales floor. All of that begins in the back room, sorting through random donations. Cutting corners here will cut sales. 

Measure - Keeping score is the only real way to know you are winning. You can always measure pieces produced by person. It isn’t the best measure but it’s something. Production staff should see and know sales numbers every day. 

If producers are divided by type of product, say textiles, books, hard goods, they should be keenly aware of how their category is doing. In a perfect world, a high-end POS system tracks pieces and sales by producer. 

Reward - The rainmakers in any company are rewarded for the value they add. Talented thrift producers, those that find value and properly price are rainmakers. Pay and reward them accordingly. 

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I have lost track of how many times I have solved a thrift sales problem by pushing more fresh goods to the sales floor faster. (Getting rid of stale goods is the other side of that coin, a discussion for another day) 

For that matter, I solved Wal Mart sales problems by getting stuff out of the backroom onto the sales floor. 

Get production right and sales will follow.

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Thanks for reading!

Tim Gebauer - Thrift Retailer