GMROI Application (Tradecraft)

This is a couple of posts from my Gary Ray, Author page on Facebook.  I've had this page for a couple years now and despite only a couple hundred people on it, there's far more engagement than this creaky old blog. I encourage you to follow me there, because there will come I time I give up on this medium.

Here are my posts, which I'll certainly use in inventory management or buying presentations in the future. It takes a rather arcane concept, Gross Margin Return on Investment, something I've talked about before, and uses it as a tool for ordering. Applying a tool, what a concept!

I don't want to spend much money this week on restocks. How many times have you been in that position, but you're not sure how to proceed?

I was in a seminar once and they suggested you work with your restock list with your distributor, going by code down the list, until you hit your purchasing budget. I found that astonishing.

Say you have $2,000 for purchasing and you really aren't sure where to spend it. This is where I was this morning and remembered GMROI, which I had just calculated for the store the day before. GMROI is Gross Margin Return on Investment.

For every dollar you spend, GMROI measures how much money you'll get back. Would you rather get $2 for your $1 investment or $1.50? You want the $2 of course, although you might decide you want to focus on short term velocity (turns) rather than long term return (GMROI). We have multiple tools in the tool box.

In my example below, I could spend my money on high turning card games for a short term gain, but the GMROI is just average. It's an average investment. If I need a snack run, I should probably do that order first, with its $2.06 return on every dollar I spend. Costco is my most profitable distributor, dollar for dollar.

What I used to do is place my Games Workshop order first, but now I see with GMROI that tactical miniature games are my lowest return. That's the last place I should spend my money, return wise. It also has a below average turn rate. It's marginal, but still worthwhile. It's certainly not my top priority.

So when I went through my orders this morning, I de-emphasized GW ($1.58 GMROI), made sure to re-stock every card supply option ($1.91 GMROI), and made sure my snacks were stocked (which I did on Friday), since it has the best GMROI of the bunch.

My store is healthy, but where you really see GMROI shine is with troubled stores or troubled departments. There have been departments where I've calculated sub $1 returns on my investment. In the GMROI example I'll link to, I was making 90 cents for every dollar invested in classic games. We shored that up, mostly by carrying far fewer of them.

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I know from GMROI what department comprises my worst investment, but why is it my worst investment? Why are tactical miniature games my worst performing department when it comes to investing money?

The vast majority of that department is comprised of Games Workshop. I can see my COGS percentage number is far too high, 63%, when my average is 57%. What makes my margin so poor with GW? It turns out to be a lot of factors:

1. The base margin for most GW products is 45%, which is lower than many lines. 

2. Direct order products from GW are 35%, even worse.

3. My store offers a 10% discount for pre-orders, which brings a lot of product down to that 35%.

4. The splash nature of GW releases means I attempt to funnel as many sales through special orders as possible, at 35%, hurting my margin.

5. The splash nature of GW means I order heavily in hopes to avoid outages. This results in overstock, which is then clearanced at a discount.

6. The enforced once a work ordering AND the one week ship time for us means I can't rely on just-in-time ordering, like I do with the rest of the store, so I order deeper, taking more risks.

7. My 45 day terms with GW means I push my luck even further, which means when I lose, I lose bigger. 

8. My prize support tends to exceed my allowance of free product, to some extent, which is really a marketing expense, but it increases cost of goods.

So for that reason, tactical miniature games are my worst performing department. However, there are other considerations:

1. 4.1 turns is nothing to sneeze at. This is solid inventory performance, and if there was a worse performing department (there isn't), it might make sense to take advantage of this.

2. Metrics don't measure volume or profit, so Magazines might have better metrics, but I sell 30 times more miniatures making a much larger profit.

3. Tactical Miniature Games drives sales of paint and miniature cases, which are also weaker departments, but together make up even more sales.

4. Pre-orders and low margin special orders are risk free. It's low performing money, but it's free money.

5. The clearancing of product is painful, but GW products have brand value protection, so you'll always sell all of it, over cost, eventually, without a lot of work.

So what we see is tactical miniature games for my store should be of least priority, but they're a big enough draw to maintain, provided they're propped up by more profitable departments. It's not an area in which I should look to expand, unless I've exhausted all other options.

That's why when I had a little extra money from clearancing my last miniature game, I did the wise thing. I invested in ice cream.