The Benchmark of Bookstore Sales Performance
Many of us who have become bookstore owners have a passion for books. To live the dream as a professional bookseller, we also need to maintain a strong interest in the basics of the retailing business. A foundation of the merchandising business is Inventory Turnover. One turn is completed when all items initially on hand for that year have been sold and replaced by new items.
Keeping track of turnover of inventory can be a problem for the used bookstore owner because there will be titles which come into the store and then go out in a week, while other titles sit on the shelves for years. Many of your titles are unique books that you may only have one copy of. FIFO and LIFO do not make sense in this situation. Is there anything wrong with keeping a book around for several years until it sells? A used bookstore is not a supermarket with food that goes bad in a short time. Additionally, if the used bookstore owner received money for those books which sat around for years, what is the concern?
Whether it appears this way or not, the books that are sitting on your shelves are costing the business money – if not in dollars then in the time it takes to manage those books. Most bookstore owners have limited space in which to keep and display their inventories. That space could be better utilized with books that turn more quickly. As an online business, much time is spent managing inventory and revising listings – time which is best spent on faster turning books.
