How to scale your retail business successfully
It may seem strange to talk about growing a retail business at the current time. Inflation is at its highest in decades, consumer confidence is at an all-time low and many retailers are still struggling to adapt to the inexorable rise of eCommerce.
But fortune favors the brave and those retailers who have successfully weathered the pandemic will find the competitive landscape less crowded and will be better positioned to take advantage of growth opportunities and expand their business.
Why expand?
Expanding a retail business gets your products to more consumers, gives your brand greater recognition and creates economies of scale that translate into higher margins and profits.
Here are four techniques for successfully scaling your retail business.
1. Determine what your key selling points are
A common mistake many retailers make is targeting the wrong audience.
Adopting poorly targeted marketing strategies wastes money and hinders your business expansion. Therefore, focus your time and energy on your target audience, i.e., the people who are actually interested in buying your products and services.
Likewise, offering too many products can confuse your audience. Dedicate yourself to identifying your key offerings or a special product that differentiates your brand from your competitors.
Remember that people love to visit stores that have a special offer and, more importantly, this will keep them coming back.
2. Automate your operations with a modern POS system
Modern POS systems help businesses quickly process transactions, manage orders and inventory, collect customer data, run loyalty programs, and run reports.
In the past, these functions might be performed by different systems or even done manually. But as the retail business grows, the drawbacks of having “legacy” systems, often difficult to modernize and not designed to work with each other, become more apparent and this can be a real barrier to expansion.
3. Increase reach through digital platforms
If you want to scale your business, you must not only retain your existing customers, but also focus on attracting more people to your store. Now is the time to grow your customer base and expand your business nationally and globally, particularly online.
In addition to your own website, social media, search engines, emails, flyers, and marketplaces are proven, cost-effective ways to showcase your products or services to your target audience, increase your customer reach, and ultimately scale your business.
4. Adopt a scalable cloud-based infrastructure
The use of the cloud is no longer a topic of discussion, as retailers already recognize that it is the best way to achieve the degree of flexibility and scalability that is required today.
As the retail business grows, it needs to handle increasing amounts of data across many locations, so the scalability of its IT infrastructure becomes more important.
A cloud-based platform like Openbravo Commerce Cloud helps retailers better manage network connectivity, bandwidth costs and data privacy, while improving information across all stores.
It’s your time to grow
Scaling any retail business today requires not only solid foundations, but also setting smart business goals and investing time and effort to achieve them. It also requires conviction and determination to succeed.
There’s no time like the present to start scaling your business!
