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All Time Toys

How Retailer All Time Toys Survived Natural Disaster with Retail Pro

“Retail Pro is easily customizable, which, in a business like ours is crucial. We customized the user interface to include fields for the exact data we need to sell online – things like name, subname, item, weight, dimensions, UPC, and at least three photos which we get from our wholesalers.”

– Jason Barnes, owner All Time Toys

Headquarters:
Ellicott City, Maryland USA
Product:
Retail Pro 9 Retail Dimensions ecommerce integration to Retail Pro X-Cart website
Business Partner:
Customer Since:
2011
Toy Store Opening With RD2D at the red ribbon to be cut

Unlike your retail strategy or your promotions, natural disasters come unscheduled and the full brunt of their impact is never quite in line with the forecast. In addition, the threat of cyberterrorists holding your retail data hostage – with a minimum ransom value of millions – is a reality in retail today.

Thus, disaster preparedness is an absolute necessity for every business to mitigate risk and secure their retail data.

This is the retail case study of the retail store All Time Toys:

ATT Green Vertical Block Logo
  • How it was built up from a stand at the flea market to a bustling brick-and-mortar and online operation
  • How it was impacted by the flash flood that destroyed much of life and commerce in Ellicott City, Maryland
  • How owner Jason Barnes is rebuilding his business in the aftermath

Before the Flood

Jason Barnes – a true comic book aficionado at heart – started with All Time Toys over 10 years ago, when it was just a flea market operation full of hope and big superhero dreams. Through determination, perseverance, and a lot of hard work, he and the All Time Toys then-owners built the business up, moving into a brick & mortar store in Ellicott City, Maryland – one of the cities in Howard County, which in 2015 was the 3rd wealthiest county in the US.

In 2011, the company invested in the Retail Pro retail management platform for its POS and back office ERP functionality.

Toy store full of people

“Retail Pro was the perfect fit for our needs and I like the software much more than Micros or what we used in the military, which is basically the software Walmart uses,” Barnes explained. “We use Retail Pro to keep track of our 60 thousand inventory items, product and gift card sales, and critical KPIs.”

When asked what he likes about Retail Pro, Barnes said, “Retail Pro is easily customizable, which, in a business like ours is crucial. Our shelves have Voltron sitting next to Luke Skywalker, sitting next to Rapunzel and all kinds of action figures, 3D statues, Marvel superheroes…. If it’s very cool, very unique or very vintage, we sell it. Some of our product is very old though – like 1980s video games – and, for example, they might not have UPCs. So we need a software that allows us to determine what data we enter. We customized the user interface to include fields for the exact data we need to sell online – things like name, subname, item, weight, dimensions, UPC, and at least three photos which we get from our wholesalers.”

All Time Toys uses a Retail Pro-Retail Dimensions integration that syncs data from Retail Pro directly to their website and eBay account, giving them omnichannel data connectivity. “The greatest asset we have in our business is the ability to pull data from the Retail Pro Point of Sale for our website and eBay,” said Barnes, “And the Retail Pro-Retail Dimensions integration automatically does about 90% of the data work needed to upload products to these market places.”

In June 2016, Barnes used his family nest egg to buy out the toy store he had come to love. He planned to invigorate the business in three years, adding product and expanding to multiple locations.

Disaster Strikes

The very next month, however, All Time Toys and all of Ellicott City were devastated by a deadly 1-in-1000-year flash flood.

“It was a perfectly normal, sunny day. A good sales day,” Barnes recounts. “The worst thing up to that point was all the people playing Pokémon Go!”

And then the storm clouds rolled in.

Ellicott City was hit with over 6 inches of rain in 3 hours, with some places seeing over 8.22 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service.

During a break in the weather, Barnes sent his employee home, and soon after, he closed up shop and headed for home himself, an hour’s drive during good weather.

But he decided to turn back and check on his inventory in the shop’s basement – and with this providential decision, he unknowingly positioned himself at the right time and place in history to lead the rescue of a young woman trapped in her car in the middle of the dirty, furious torrent of floodwaters.

“It was very surreal. The sidewalk is made of brick and the water was just destroying it – I could feel the bricks hitting my legs under the water. Jonny reached out to me and the human chain just formed naturally to get me over to her, but we came up short – so I knew I would have to let go to get her out. I remember noise, things hitting my feet. 20 minutes later, the water started receding. That’s when you really started to see the destruction – the buildings were blown out, sidewalks broken, cars everywhere, sirens, people screaming. And then the smell of gas.”

When commended for his heroism, Barnes said simply, “I just think that’s the bare-line, minimal, decent thing you could do. I’ve always had high faith in humanity, that people will do the right thing when it’s presented.”

In the Aftermath

“The county allowed us into our stores for about 10 minutes. I was only able to get my server at that time. Two-thirds of my inventory and store displays were damaged by the flood. My whole section of inventory for eBay sales is destroyed.” Barnes tallies the loss to be about $30,000 in inventory.

Jason had just started working with his Retail Pro Business Partner, Complete Data Systems, when he bought the store. Prior to that, they had not been actively using the data they collected in Retail Pro – but they also had not taken steps to secure the data.

If his store computer would have been damaged, all of his data would have been lost in the flood, because the store had no data backups. Jason would have to reenter all of the thousands of his inventory items and his employee data, and collect all new customer data. All of his vendor history would have been lost, as well as all of the sales data he would have used to make projections.

Thankfully, his computer did not suffer damage and all of that data was preserved in the Retail Pro archive.

“Our first action item was to do a remote backup of that information so we could put that onto new computers, so he does not have to start at zero,” said Michael Armstrong, Sales Director at Complete Data Systems. “We are fortunate that his loss wasn’t completely catastrophic and we were able to go back to his database, save all of his data, and then reinstall that on new hardware.”

While the County was busily rebuilding the streets of Ellicott City, Barnes was working from home with his children, busily planning for his grand reopening – recovering data and upgrading his Retail Pro with Complete Data Systems, and preparing his inventory. On January 21, 2017, Barnes and all of the All Time Toys fans celebrated that grand reopening, complete with R2-D2 and a light saber for the ribbon cutting.

Online Sales

Toy Store Website Sleek and Elegant

In addition, All Time Toys is rebuilding their website with Retail Dimensions.

Retail Dimensions built a website on X-cart for All Time Toys and integrated it to their new Retail Pro 9. With this integration, Barnes will have the ease of:

  • Dynamically updating categories and product assignments
  • Merchandising items for the web while keeping item quantities and prices current
  • Automatically downloading orders and customers to Retail Pro
  • Automatically updating orders on the site upon shipment

“We are excited to be part of Jason’s team in rebuilding All Time Toys! Retail Dimensions is helping him get his site back up so the integration to Retail Pro will be running again when his store reopens. And we are suspending all fees for him until he’s able to get back on his feet after all this. Jason is an amazing story of persistence, resilience and faith,” said Kurt Beeken, President of Retail Dimensions.

We Will Rebuild

Toy store owner receiving an award

Even with so much unforeseen loss in the first month of owning his business, Barnes is undeterred from his goal of reinvigorating the toy store, and the whole world is playing a part in it! In recognition of his heroism, Barnes was award the Governor’s Award for Excellence, Ellicott City Heroism Award, and the Birdland Hero Award from the Major League Baseball team the Baltimore Orioles, and he has been nominated for a Carnegie Heroism Award.

In addition, the rescue video went viral and people from all over the world are donating to a Go Fund Me set up for Barnes – enabling him to quickly reinvest in his business.

“Now that we’ve reopened and our shelves are getting well-stocked again, we hope to be in a position to open a second brick & mortar by the fall of 2017,” Barnes disclosed.

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Move ‘Em Out: How to Sell What’s Not Selling

As we wrote this post we stopped every once in a while to sing the theme song from the TV show “Rawhide.” The retail tie-in pertains to the refrain, “Move ’em on, head ’em up; Head ’em up, move ’em on; Move ’em on, head ’em up… Rawhide!” That’s exactly what you do each time you take a markdown: Head ’em up and move ’em out. At least that’s what we hope you do. Consider the retailer who was convinced by a dubious financial counselor to invest $1000.  The counselor promised that $1000 investment would yield $2,500 within 12 months, so the retailer handed over her hard earned cash Three months later the retailer called the financial counselor to see how her money was growing. The answer was disappointing: her investment was down to $815, but the counselor encouraged her not to be discouraged.  Another three months passed and the retailer called again, this time her $1000 investment was down to $488. Six months later its value was just $104.00. Not exactly a happy ending. This scenario happens in retail stores all across the country each year, maybe even in yours. You might be that financial counselor if you’ve ever held on to merchandise far past its selling life, you’ve been there. Sometimes you hold on to product so long that it begins to fade, wear a little around the edges, and fall out of style. You might even have some of this merchandise on your sales floor right now. Here’s the thing: the fashion and seasonal items you carry have limited life cycles. You should never wait until shoppers turn up their noses and walk away from a display as the only hint that it’s time for a markdown. The basic items you need to stock every day can become shopworn and need to go too, even if it means reordering that same item. Just because you loved it when you bought it doesn’t mean that customers will too, and it doesn’t mean that it’s guaranteed to sell. We call buying things you personally you fall in love with the “halo effect,” which is dangerous to your bottom line. You need to make sure that your invested money works smarter and harder for you, supplying a return on your investment. Let’s look at the key areas you need to manage to move ’em out: Calculate your Turn. Inventory turnover, or turn, is a measure of the number of times inventory is sold within a period of time, usually a year. The easiest to way to determine your inventory turn figure is to simply divide your last year’s total retail sales by your year ending inventory at retail value. To achieve a better turn rate, you need to closely control your inventory. Be insistent about delivery dates, and implement a strong markdown program to clear out product that’s past its sell date. Tell vendors when you want to receive your orders. Before you place that order ask yourself when the product actually needs to be in the store, and then tell your vendors what you need. It’s foolish to take late-season deliveries if that can hurt you, and it’s just as foolish to receive goods – and have to pay for them – far in advance of your actual need time. So request delivery dates. You won’t always get your wish, but if you don’t ask, the vendor will always get theirs. It’s fabric, not wine. It doesn’t get better over time.To manage your inventory and return on investment (ROI), you need to know the age of every item on your sales floor and in your back room. When did it arrive? You don’t always have time to run to your computer or POS system to look it up. And let’s be honest, when was the last time you actually did that? Instead, adopt a system to mark each item with a “received date” code that allows you to instantly determine age without having to leave the sales floor to check a report. We like a simple bin ticket for this task. Bin tickets are stickers that you place on each shelf or fixture to indicate the item’s designated home. Bin tickets should include the information that’s important to you, including SKU number, maximum and minimum quantities, price, cost (in code shoppers can’t decipher), vendor, and date code. The date code tells you when the item was received so you’ll know at a glance which products are selling and which are not. Let’s say a customer asks for a particular item, so you lead the customer to the place it’s supposed to be. The bin ticket is there, but the shelf is empty. Or worse, the space has been filled in with another product. How long has this merchandise been out of stock? Is there more in the back room? How do you know? Here’s where our Dot System comes into play. You’ll need a supply of small red and green adhesive dots. A green dot on the bin ticket means there is more of this particular available product in the back room. A red dot on the bin ticket means there is no more in the back room. No dot on the bin ticket means there isn’t any more of this product in the back room and this item is not to be reordered. Train your associates to check the stock room each time they come across an empty shelf and a bin ticket with a green dot. This product is available and needs to be restocked ASAP. Know when to take a markdown. Markdowns are not your enemy; in fact it’s smart retailing to ditch the dogs. Stores do not close because they had to take markdowns. They close when product is not sold fast enough to create the cash flow needed to cover expenses. When taken on time, the first markdown is always the cheapest markdown. Clearing out merchandise before the price/value relationship is destroyed is critical. You should mark down items as soon as sales start to slow down. Let’s say you have an item that’s currently priced at $25.00 but it isn’t selling. If you mark that item down to $19.99, its value goes up in the customer’s mind. If markdowns are not taken in time it will take much larger discounts to create value. Just ask an apparel retailer who’s trying to sell prom dresses at full price in July. Keep this in mind: Markdowns allow you to maximize your invested dollars. When you get those dollars back you can reinvest into newer items that will yield higher margins and better inventory turn. One of your jobs is to be on the lookout for merchandise that’s past its prime, taking take markdowns as frequently as necessary to clear this merchandise. Sales on seasonal merchandise should start just before the season ends; waiting until after the season/holiday is over will severely hurt your return. Packing product way for next year isn’t a good idea either. Get the cash out of your investment and keep it working with new, fresh goods. Properly display markdown merchandise. When you run a sale, run a SALE. Display the product near the front of the store or in its normal home. You can also use your speed bump displays to house this merchandise during the sale. Highlight the displays with banners or signs created specifically for the sale. We’ve seen too many clearance areas that look like disaster zones; that’s no way to create value. Clearance items should be merchandised with the same care as regularly priced product. When running a clearance sale, display this product near the front of the store. After the sale move it to a small clearance area near the rear of the store so that shoppers have to pass through displays of new product to get to it. Clearly sign your clearance area so that shoppers will want to stop and check it out before heading to the cash wrap.  “Hot Spot” and “One to the Right”. Every section of every fixture has what’s called a hot spot; it’s the part of the fixture that sells product the best. To find the hot spot in any fixture, draw an imaginary cross through the center of the fixture – the hot spot is at eye level (about 5 feet 4 inches) where the two lines intersect. Customers tend to stop in the center of a display to peruse the product, so this area is easily seen. Use it to display important product you don’t want shoppers to miss. Here’s an insider tip: Remember “Hot Spot and One to the Right.” Shoppers do a lot of things they don’t realize they do, like reaching for product with their right hand. This means that the position just to the right of the Hot Spot is also a strong display space. You can use this area to display new items or to energize product that’s still in its selling season but isn’t moving. It’s also a great place to house product that’s a tough sell. Display impulse items at the cashwrap. A lot more happens at the cash wrap besides just ringing the sale; it’s where impulse purchases live. Load your cash wrap with product customers just can’t pass up. Think of the add-on sales possibilities! If you have a wall behind your cash wrap, use it to create displays that keep customers thinking about product – it’s also the perfect place to introduce new products Cross-merchandising. Why just sell one item when you can sell two or three? Here’s where cross-merchandising come in handy. Display different products or categories together on the same fixture. Cross-merchandising helps shoppers easily visualize how the items will look or work together. This technique is always a safe bet for the speed bump displays at the front of the store. Merchandise Outposts. The next time you are at a department store take a look at the product that’s displayed in the main aisles. Chances are you’ll find tables of product that’s not in its traditional home on the sales floor. These clever displays are called Merchandise Outposts; their sole purpose is to encourage impulse purchases. They make shoppers stop and think, “I need that!” Merchandise Outposts will work on your sales floor, too. Maximize in-store signing. Signs act as silent salespeople, helping customers when no one is available to help. Women read signs for information; men rely on them to make decisions. And since 70 percent of purchase decisions are made in-store, your signs actually entice shoppers to buy. To be effective your signs must be three things:
  1. Easy-to-read. Use at least a 30 point font so shoppers can see them even without their reading glasses. Use both upper and lower case letters, all caps are harder for older eyes to read. Most books, newspapers, and magazines use a serif font because this type is easier to read. Times New Roman, Palatino, Georgia, Courier, Bookman, and Garamond are popular serif fonts.
  1. Easy-to-understand. The offer or item description on the sign must be is perfectly clear. Use small, simple words so the sign is easy to scan.
  1. Professional. Print signs on your computer on a neutral colored paper. (Know what neon paper says to a shopper? It says, “This stuff sucks and we can’t give it away.”). Use proper sign holders, not tape, to display signs. And unless handwritten signing is part of your brand, don’t do it.
Schedule in-store events and promotions. To move product and build community awareness you need to hold one MAJOR and one to two MINOR events in your store each month. Events are the one thing that can really set your store apart from the competition. Major events – think open houses and semi-annual clearance sales – attract a large number of people to your store. Minor events, such as classes and trunk shows, tend to draw smaller crowds, but still take time to plan. We recommend that you plan your events out months in advance. We can help here, too. If you need event ideas, send us an email and put “Promotions” in the subject line.   Read more here   Source: Move ‘Em Out: How to Sell What’s Not Selling | KIZER & BENDER’s Retail Adventures
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