Parkview Retail
Richard Ingliss MD of Parkview Retail a Southern Co Op Franchise partner has just completed the successful re-invention of his store group’s tobacco retailing.
Following EUTPD and plain packaging last May nothing had been done by the tobacco company providing his gantries to help improve the problems of serving customers and the wasted space that their half empty gantry took up. The empty gantry space and extra time trying to serve cus-tomers was taking up useful resources and wasting time.
After conducting a quick analysis of each of his store’s tobacco sales he found that only a small percentage of the range accounted for the majority of the sales revenue and that by cutting the slow selling brands out of his range improved the category’s profitability and freed up a lot of working capital for other higher margin items he wanted to introduce into the stores. The problem he now had was oversize gantrys and he knew that it would be compounded in 2020 when menthol brands would be banned.
The solution was to fit one of Navarra's smaller and more efficient Smart Tobacco Gantries into each store. He cut his 80 plus tobacco SKU’s down to the most profitable 46 to fit into the RDH600P smart gantry.
His EPOS partner VME Retail had recently completed the integration. These smart gantrys are controlled by his EPOS till, so it was plug and play and provided the extra benefit of a secure closed loop stock control and much faster service and operations times.
Richard’s staff have said that it makes life a lot easier, no turning their backs on the customer and searching among the plain packaged brands, fewer queues at busy periods. Richard’s team now have accountability in the category, easy stock control and ordering and the knowledge that all his tobacco stock is safe and protected for theft.
“Navarra have a range of smart tobacco gantries to suit different sales and range levels, we de-cided to go for the smaller systems as we had already managed our brand range and did not need a larger system. We now have more efficient backline and a profitable range of tobacco brands for our customers”
“We based the decision on the following
- Improved security
- Faster customer service
- Extra space behind the counter for other items (Spirits & Health Care results in less back stock)
- Easier stock counting of cigarettes
- Far harder for staff to take stock
- Reducing range holdings - Limiting the range to 46 items or less focus on the best seller (Sales have not reduced)
- Quicker re-fill due to reduced range and the new storage in the unit.
- Lower insurance costs
- Reduce risk of break-ins
6 months on we asked Richard how everything was working in the three stores and if there were any metrics or figures. Richard said the first thing was that he was making more money across the tobacco range, less was really was generating more. No customer had walked out if they did not have their brand in stock, as generally smokers have a second and third choice. Richard had put markers on the brands when they appeared on the till screen to outline if they were low price and help the staff guide customers choice. The staff were also very happy with the systems as it was so easy to use. The 900mm bay space generated by the smaller smart gantries was used to extend the spirits range and and ensure the back stock was put out into the store so it would sell quicker and thus generate more profit.
This is the best result for Richard’s stores and it would be easy to do the same for your store.