Mastering Your Stock Management to Drive Profit with Victoria Clark

Catherine Erdly: [00:00:00] Have you ever wondered if you could be doing more with the stock that you have, or perhaps asked yourself why you made a certain buying decision when all of that stock turns up? If that sounds familiar, then Victoria Clark’s story is going to resonate with you today. She’s the founder of the Readymoney Beach Shop, and she’s going to be telling us all about her experiences with improving her stock management through the Stock Doctor program.

Hi, I’m Catherine Erdly. I’m your host today, as well as the founder of the Resilient Retail Club. Why not head over to resilientretailclub.com? You can find out more about my membership group and my mastermind, as well as the Stock Doctor program. And you can book a call to find out more and see if it’s right for you.

Let’s jump in.

Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan, a podcast for anyone wanting to start, grow or scale a profitable creative product business with me, Catherine Eardley. The Resilient Retail Game Plan is a podcast [00:01:00] dedicated to one thing, breaking down the concepts and tools that I’ve gathered from 20 years in the retail industry and showing you how you can use them in your business.

This is the real nuts and bolts of running a successful product business, broken down in an easy, accessible way. This is not a podcast about learning how to make your business look good. It’s the tools and techniques that will make you and your business feel good. Confidently plan, launch, and manage your products, and feel in control of your sales numbers and cash flow to help you build a resilient retail business.

Victoria, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Victoria Clark: Hi.

Catherine Erdly: Delighted to have you with us. Do you want to tell everyone about who you are and what you do?

Victoria Clark: Yes, of course. So my name is Victoria. I live down in lovely Fowey in Cornwall, on the south coast of Cornwall. And back in 2017, I converted [00:02:00] what was then a public toilet block or a defunct public toilet block into a little beach shop called Ready Money Beach Shop because we’re at Ready Money Cove.

 That was back in 2007 and that’s grown over the years to where we are now.

Catherine Erdly: Amazing. So it was all started from, it was sort of a public campaign or people just posting, right? Like what’s happening to the toilets.

Victoria Clark: Yeah, so I’d been involved through community project to raise some money for some Christmas. I mean, it’s all one of one of these very convoluted set of affairs that one thing led to another. And I sort of fell into it by accident, really. I’m a solicitor by background when we moved to Cornwall 10 years ago. 

The ups and downs of growing a souvenir shop

Victoria Clark: That was from a career in the law and I’ve never done anything like that before. So, just fell into it on a needs basis and opened it very much as selling as a facility to keep the toilets open for the community because it’s the only toilets at that beach, which is really important. Yeah, and then to sell ice cream and hot chocolate and coffee and snacks and buckets and spades and all the things you need for a day at the beach.

Then over the years, started adding more of the souvenirs. Our [00:03:00] customers get split into different sections. We’ve got our local customers who are there all day, every day, walking the dogs down with the kids at the weekends. We’ve got people who either have second homes or visit a lot, who might come down a couple of times or fairly regularly, maybe once a month.

Catherine Erdly: Yeah, yes.

Victoria Clark: And then there are people who come to Fowey once a year. It’s their big holiday. They’ve been doing it forever. Lot of the time with generations, it’s been their grandparents and then parents, it’s these multi generational groups and they come back and it’s a really meaningful place to them.

And a lot of these people, the souvenirs side of it really resonates with them. So that’s developed into the product side of the business with sourcing. Yes, there’s souvenirs, but I’m quite fussy about what I buy. If don’t like it, I don’t sell it. And I’m very lucky that there’s nothing else at the beach.

So there’s no competition. It’s not like a lot of other seaside towns in Cornwall where you’ll be at a beach and there’ll be maybe two or three beach shops next to each other, all competing to sell the same [00:04:00] thing. So I can be quite fussy with what I sell. And I do tend to focus on the smaller locally sourced brands because there’s so many people in Cornwall and further afield into Devon and into the Southwest, really talented, making amazing things.

And they’re not necessarily, you know, they’re selling them themselves. So I do a lot of work on Instagram to connect with makers and get them in. So it’s been it’s grown very organically over the years. It’s been really fun and it’s been a whole new set of skills to learn, definitely, because it’s not something that I ever had any experience of.

 I remember when I opened it, somebody said to me, I was really stressed about it. And somebody who had a shop in the town then said, “Look, come on, Victoria, it’s just a case of buying things and then selling them to people. It’s not that complicated.” So I kind of come back to that every now and then, and that is true.

It is buying it and selling it. And that’s the fundamental bit, but it’s buying the right things for me. That’s what’s so important.

Catherine Erdly: Yes. Yes. And it’s souvenirs, but it’s not what you would, when you hear the word souvenir, I think [00:05:00] that can be a little bit of a mixed word.

Victoria Clark: Yes, definitely. So it’s things like I mean, one of our biggest, most popular items is our range of, we have ready money Cornish wear mugs. And people love things like this. They’re a really strong, identifiable, viable brand. And they’re really popular. and this is one of the areas where I’ve needed a bit of reining back. I have sort of fallen down a little bit of a slope with getting the sort of, the cuddly toys with the town name on that I’ve got because I thought people would like them. But I’ve realised that although people do like them, they’re probably not what me and my business is about and they don’t fit quite right with me.

So I think there was quite a steep trajectory of me adding things, meeting with suppliers and going, “Oh yeah, we’ll try that. Yeah. We’ll try that.” And a lot of it has been trial and error. One of my suppliers will come in and show me all these catalogs of stuff and I’ll just be, “No. No.” 

“But these are all really popular in other beat shops,” and I’m sure they are, but they’re [00:06:00] not for me. It’s that whole kind of not kiss me quick. That’s not really the right term, but not even tat. That’s not the right term either. Cause these things have all got a place.

If you take, let’s take something as simple as a fridge magnet. People love fridge magnets. People are obsessed with fridge magnets and will buy fridge magnets wherever they go. There are different classes of fridge magnet. And I can get a fridge magnet from a small business who’s making them by hand and they’re individual, or I can get them 200 or something at a time from China, but you’ll see the same one in every other beach shop around Cornwall and probably around the country. And so for me, that’s not the model that I’m working to. I like working with those small producers who, you know, when I’m chatting to them and I’m talking to my email or Instagram or what have you, I’m talking to the person who’s actually making them.

As opposed to the hard sell from a salesman. Obviously that’s going to work for some businesses, but it’s just not what I want for mine and it works well and I think because there’s that personal element with me speaking to the [00:07:00] suppliers and then me pass almost passing on that connection to my customers. It’s that very personal approach.

Catherine Erdly: Yes, Yes. So it’s really your curation.

Victoria Clark: And I use that word a lot. I do use carefully curated as a kind of a buzzword on the website. And I do try and think quite carefully about what I’m buying. But definitely over the last few years of, as the business has grown and expanded, I’ve definitely lost my way with that a little bit.

And I’ve got things that actually aren’t really true to my sort of the core message of the business. So that’s what I’ve been trying to pull back on a little bit.

Catherine Erdly: And also to say you sell online as well, right?

Victoria Clark: Yes. Yeah. So like many people during lockdown, people are like, “Oh, can I buy this?” I realized I had a really basic website before that because people would come into the shop. I mentioned to the customers who will come for their one annual visit to Fowey and they’ll come in the summer. And then they’ll [00:08:00] message me at Christmas and say, “Oh, actually I saw this when I was in the shop,” or “I saw this when I was in the shop last week.”

Can I buy it online? So started, that’s where it came from really on a needs basis started. Initially, it was just okay, “I’ll post it, you can pay on PayPal,” that was a faff, then moved to a really basic Wix website. But then during lockdown, when I couldn’t open and nobody could open, that was the time when like a lot of people, I moved to Shopify and completely changed the whole e commerce side of the business.

So I don’t tend to work actually in the shop that much unless I’m covering holiday or leave or sickness, absence, what have you. So my focus is doing all the numerous admin things that need doing behind the scene, but also building the e commerce and doing all the associated marketing with that.

So the email marketing is a really big thing for me. I have a really loyal bunch of weekly newsletter readers who work really well. And we’ve got so many repeat customers. I wrote a blog post about [00:09:00] it, I think last year, cause I had one at the time, I think one of my repeat customers, they’re up to like 50 orders each or something. They just order.

And I know that I can post something, add a new product, and they’ll order it. And there’s people are so loyal. I’ve packed three orders this morning and they’re all repeat customers. None of those are brand new customers. There’s a lot of repeat business. And that has been a learning curve as well with managing my stock, because I was like, “Oh, this is sold really well. Let’s buy more of it.” 

But that doesn’t work. I don’t know. You’re going nodding. Yes. That doesn’t work when you’re selling to the same people when you’re selling to the same loyal customers. they don’t need to buy it again because they’ve already got it. So that’s been a definite shift in my learning over the last probably six to 12 months, certainly since I’ve been doing Stock Doctor in helping me.

And that’s just helped me think like a retailer, really in terms of seasonal collections, changing things up, bringing new things in and moving things on.

What business was like before Victoria joined Stock Doctor

Catherine Erdly: Brilliant. Well, I mean, that brings me very neatly [00:10:00] onto what I was going to talking about Stock Doctor. So you’ve been one of the first people to join the Stock Doctor program since last summer. So what was it like in for you in the business before you joined Stock Doctor?

Victoria Clark: It was chaotic, honestly chaotic. So this is my home office and we’ve got shelves on either side, which we’ve got a lot of the gifty stock in. And then I have a big storage unit because the shop itself is really small, with not much storage, and I have a big storage unit in the next village where I’ve got boxes of buckets and spades and beach mats and all that sort of thing.

And it was just full. There was just stuff everywhere. And I said, because it had grown so exponentially, I’d see something. “Yeah, that’s nice.” And I’d add it. And I fell into that gap, particularly with one of the companies who were selling me a lot of the beach stuff of buying in bulk.

And I know this is something that you’ve talked about before on podcasts, buying in bulk to get a cheaper price and buying in bulk to get a cheaper price is all well and good if you know you’re going to sell it. But a lot of the time I was just doing, oh, [00:11:00] finger in the air things. I could go back and look at previous figures.

Once I had that data from Shopify to look at, “oh, how many of these have I sold?” But it still wasn’t working. So I do the ordering with him. I’d placed this big order, sort of, I mean, he didn’t normally be done in December to place the order for delivery, sort of Easter time, place these big orders. 

And then they’d come in and I’d be like, “why have I ordered all this?” And I’d start adding it to the inventory and I was like, but I don’t understand because I’ve sat down, I was sure I’d gone, right, I’ve got this many. And I’ve sold this many, so this is how many I need to buy. And it just didn’t work out. And last year, so when the last delivery came in, I think it was an Easter last year, because we’d had some really bad weather last year.

This is only a quiet period for us, Easter is when it starts to pick up. I really struggled financially to pay for that massive order that was coming in when it was coming in because I hadn’t had the cash flow to meet [00:12:00] that. And I was, yeah, it’s just like, why have I got all this stuff that I can’t pay for?

Well, I could pay for it, but you know, that I’m having to scratch around to pay for and manage. I then heard about Stock Doctor, it literally could not have come at a better time. And I do think, I think you sent out the email or mentioned it in the, because obviously I’m in the Resilient Retail group, I can’t remember how you first met, but I’m pretty sure I was in there like a shot, like, yes, I need this.

This is me that I’ve have to do this. I have to do this now. And it was, it’s quite terrifying, but yeah it needed to be done. Definitely. It was definitely right time, right place.

Catherine Erdly: Maybe this resonates, but it’s like, it’s something about when someone else comes and looks at your stock. It’s almost like, not a shameful secret, but like, it’s just information that nobody else really sees normally. I think that’s something,

Victoria Clark: Definitely. And because I’m a sole trader, I basically run this business on my own. I’ve got my staff team and one of my deputy managers, Vanessa has been with me, I think three years [00:13:00] now. She is able to see it and sort of reign me back in again. So I would make her come to the meetings when we would go with this salesman and say, literally squash me.

If I go, “Ooh,” no, just don’t let me buy it, don’t let me buy it. That’s been really good. Or I’ll talk to my husband about it. This isn’t his job. It’s not something that he, I can have a conversation with him about it, but yeah, it’s having that specialist person, it’s just like a massive breath of like a huge weight off my shoulders to go, “Oh my God, thank God I’ve got someone to talk to. Who actually wants to look at all of this.” 

Catherine Erdly: Yes. 

Victoria Clark: And help me with it. It was just like a yeah, like a massive relief to be able to access that support. Scary!

Catherine Erdly: Yeah.

Victoria Clark: It is scary, and like you talk about it, you I think I did a lot of apologising. Once they told her, I’m really sorry this, and she’s like, no.

And even since, I’ve still made it, I’ve dropped a couple of balls, and I’ll be there [00:14:00] in the corner, and I was like, I can’t believe I’ve done this. And she’ll be like, “no, but you’re fine.” And I’m definitely getting there, and just learning those lessons from somebody who’s got that specific, real, industry expertise is brilliant.

And she loves the spreadsheet. I hate spreadsheets. I know you love a spreadsheet too. I can’t bear spreadsheets. I do use them very basically because I know I need to, but I absolutely like, Oh, there was a call with her recently where she was just sat. I just need to do this. And it was just, it almost makes me, I was like, “I can’t do this.”

So that’s why that’s why having the done for you service.

Catherine Erdly: Yes.

Victoria Clark: Was always going to be what I needed of I’ve worked my way through taming tiger as part of Resilient Retail Club course, and it’s brilliant. But it does require me to do

Catherine Erdly: Yeah.

Learning to manage numbers and stock with confidence

Victoria Clark: things on spreadsheets and I’m getting a bit better at it now.

But yeah, I’ve always been anything and that’s why I was a solicitor, not an accountant. I don’t do numbers and spreadsheets. It’s always [00:15:00] been the big, no, I’m not doing that. I think actually it’s changed my thinking, even with things like planning for my tax bills and just made me more comfortable with numbers. And my numbers and how I can control those numbers. And what I need to do to make those numbers work for me.

And then not work against me so that the numbers are working for me and I’m not fighting them. And it’s definitely spread out into more aspects of the business than just managing the stocks. It’s basically like going to retail therapy. Therapy for chaotic retailers. That’s what I’m calling it.

Catherine Erdly: So let’s just go back to the Stock Doctor process. So for anyone who’s not familiar with it, then it is done for you. So we have our Stock Doctors who come in and take a look at your numbers. And it is funny because one of the things that, it might’ve been you saying this, or somebody else, but like the first time when we sit down and present back to you and say, right, this is what we found, [00:16:00] they said like, “Oh, I feel like I’m about to get my school report.”

Victoria Clark: Yeah, it’s a bit like that. It’s like that every month. I’m like, Oh my God, what’s going to happen next? What have I done?

Catherine Erdly: It’s very supportive. I have a very, and everyone who works with me has a very like, no, you know, like no shame policy. Like you guys do such amazing work and it’s such hard work as well that nobody, we just want to be there to help and help facilitate.

But you know, is there anything that particularly stood out for you about the service or how do you find it apart from being slightly terrifying?

Victoria Clark: So it’s definitely a process. So I’ve done, I’m now into the second six months. I think just January was my first my business is very seasonal, it changes so much throughout the year. I knew when I signed up to it, that I was going to need to do a full year in order to get the full picture of the business.

So the first few months were very much getting the information out, being able to pass all that information that swishes around in the heads of our small [00:17:00] business owners into someone else, because it does, it just sits there and you have to. pass it to somebody and it’s not always terribly obvious where that information is.

Obviously, Paola was able to pull the data from Shopify, which is great for accessing that data, but there’s still a lot of information that is just sort of in my head. So it was a lot of fact finding to start off with. And then it’s been a process of looking back and then, because when we were then in the build up to Christmas, so from probably July or maybe August September, I think it was onwards.

We were then properly focusing on Christmas. We then focused on clearance to have a big clearance sale in January, which has worked really well and I’m not done before. And then the remaining part of this six months, as we sort of wrap up that whole full year is very much about making those stock buying decisions going forward.

 It’s not that [00:18:00] every month it’s the same discussion. It’s very much part of a process that each month we look at something else. And then it builds on what we’ve learned before, which I think is also really helpful as a structure because you can see that those thing. So now we’re in the planning for next season.

Because obviously when I started, we were right in the midst of the busy season and I had all the stuff. I’d placed all the massive orders that I didn’t really need and I didn’t, you know, they were just there. So it’s been really particularly valuable to have it now and pull back some control over what I then do going into the next seasonal.

How Victoria’s peak season stock management has changed 

Catherine Erdly: So you how do you feel going into that peak season thing. If you think about, you know, a year ago compared? What’s the shift that’s happened? 

Victoria Clark: Much more in control. And also weirdly, as somebody, I generally would say to anyone that I’m normally fairly independent, strong-minded woman in control. And there’s this particular salesman for this [00:19:00] particular company that just turns me into, oh yeah, I’ll just buy all that. And she’d say in the course, why are you? I think it was November time, the salesman guy and he called me, “so I’ve got some of the stuff that you’ve ordered has come in already. We’ve got loads, we’re struggling with space in our warehouse. Is it all right if we have it delivered?” And I said to him, well, I can’t, I’m not going to pay for it.

And he said, “no, no, no.” He said, “Oh, you don’t have to pay for it until May.” And I said, “Oh, okay, that’s fine.” And then the next call, Paola was like, “why on earth did you do that? Why did you say yes? Why didn’t you just say no? It’s not your problem that he hasn’t got enough space in his warehouse.” And she said, “You haven’t actually analysed whether, we haven’t been through and analysed whether actually you want to buy those things that you’ve ordered.”

And in the end I think probably some of it. If I hadn’t had it delivered, we’d have gone through those numbers in a session and she just said, “don’t order that much.” don’t order, I mean, actually, it wasn’t that big a value and I know that there are things, and because there are [00:20:00] things like beach goods and tents, they’re evergreen, they last forever, so they will go, it’s just why spend the money if you don’t need to? 

And that was like, honestly, I kicked myself, and I was like, what, it’s almost like I haven’t listened to anything. So I’ve been much more bullish with him and I said, well, and so it’s, I’ve learned those skills.

Ultimately, he’s a salesman and my husband’s a salesman. So I can talk to him and my husband’s sitting there going yeah, yeah, yeah. I know all the old tricks to get you to do it. And it just made, I’m not, you know, I’m not somebody, I think probably the most salesy I’ve ever been like that is if you go and buy a car, for example, and don’t do that very often where you’re actually being sold to.

And he’s not selling me, trying to sell those things because they’re the right thing for my business. He’s trying to sell them because he wants to get the sales to get his commission or what have you. I’ve been much more bullish. I’ve been able to be firmer with him and like, send me through what is outstanding.

And I said, right, take that off the order. I don’t want that. And actually I had another supplier who was less bullish.[00:21:00] 

Catherine Erdly: Yeah.

Victoria Clark: But whose products I actually preferred that. I wasn’t ordering from because I wasn’t getting the same push.

Catherine Erdly: Yeah.

Victoria Clark: So now actually I met up with that supplier at a trade show a couple of weeks ago and I’m going to go back to getting the products from that supplier because I prefer their products and there isn’t the same push.

So I have learned my lesson, I promise.

The merchandising strategy Victoria used to sell through overstock

Catherine Erdly: And have there been any specific, because I also remember when we were first working together or when you first joined the program and it was also about identifying, okay, this is the stock that you’ve got, so you’ve got it now, so you got to push it. Did you find that was helpful during the peak season last year as well?

Victoria Clark: Yeah, definitely. So identifying, so one of the things that I had a lot of from this previous horrendous delivery in the beginning of last year was rugby balls. We have beach rugby balls and footballs that have Fowey [00:22:00] stamped on them. And I don’t know what I’d done, but I’d literally ordered twice as many as we had sold the previous year.

So it meant that I was able to say to my staff, we have got lots of these. I added them on the website to make them as something that people could buy online, either inflated or flat and that it didn’t shift a lot. But it shifted more than it otherwise would. And it meant I could say to the top, the team in the shop, right, this basket that sits at the front of the shop, that’s got these balls in, this needs to be filled full to the brim at all times.

And if it starts to empty. Get the pump out, get some more balls and then push those. And that has made a real difference in terms of me just going, we need to sell these, we need to sell these. There were some other things as well. Like we had some little metal spade tool set things like a set of three. A little spade and a rake and things that were wooden metal and they were lovely and on this, but they were on this cardboard packaging.

And everything was getting dusty and bent and wet in the rain and they just [00:23:00] looked rubbish. So we took them off and put them in a basket and sold them individually and they sold like they sold brilliantly to the point that I thought, “Oh, do we need to order some more of those?” And I went no, we’re not going to order some more of those.

But that was the thought process. So it’s definitely having a better awareness of what I’ve got and what the sell through rate is likely to be. In order to manage the decisions, the kind of operational decisions day to day in the shop with as in, we’ve got this, we need to sell it. Also from a merchandising perspective as well.

So doing that whole supermarket thing of, right, we’ve got lots of this particular beachy bracelet that I shouldn’t have bought. Let’s put them at the till. Let’s reduce them and put them right at the till. So people come in and buy their coffee, they go, oh yeah, I’ll pick one of those up. Whereas they might not have seen it where it was elsewhere on the display.

So that whole merchandising thing has been really valuable as well.

Catherine Erdly: That’s the kind of crux of, I mean, it’s great to hear because that is exactly what, [00:24:00] you know, Stock Doctor is kind of two principles. One, which is, you know, making sure that you’re really clear on how much you should be buying and what you should be spending your money on and avoiding kind of costly purchasing mistakes.

And then the second being, okay, well, when you’ve made that investment already and you’ve spent the money on the stock and it’s sitting there in your shop You know, do you know what you’ve already invested in? And are you pushing that enough? So that, yes of course, sometimes you have to take discount action against something.

You have to reduce the price. But actually sometimes it’s about, like you said, identifying, okay, well, I’ve got this pocket of stock, I’ve got these tool sets where I’m just sitting on this.

It’s just money that I’ve spent that I’m not getting back. And then you can start being a little bit more creative about, right, well, how can we shift it? And yeah, it’s brilliant that that’s, that’s worked well.

Victoria Clark: And I think that definite mindset into, you know, how can we get this going? There was a quite a lot of, particularly with these beach goods, there’s quite a lot of, if I buy, I don’t know, let’s say I buy some cards or prints or something from someone, they’re quite clear on what [00:25:00] the suggested retail price is.

They’ll say, Oh, we buy it for 6 pounds. Retail price is 12. And it’s very clear on the RRP. With these beach good things, it’s a lot less fluid because there’s a lot of variation. So if you’re in somewhere like Newquay and you’ve got three beach shops in a row.

Catherine Erdly: Yeah.

Victoria Clark: They’re all going to have to adjust their prices.

Now, I’m not saying that I over inflate my prices to be because of where I am, because I try really hard and do a lot of research not to do that. But it just means that the suppliers don’t give you any indication of what they suggest you sell things for. So I get my things that there’s nothing, there is no suggested retail price on any of these things.

So I’m literally using my gut and going, well, you know, I’m a parent who takes my kids to the beach. If I took my kids to the beach and they wanted to buy a bucket and a spade, how much would it pay for a bucket and a spade? And you know, these beach bracelets that I’ve got loads of. My boys are obsessed with these sorts of beach bracelets.

Everywhere they go, they’ll know they’ve got bracelets up their arm. How much would I pay for one of those? [00:26:00] And sometimes I think I would get those pricing decisions wrong. And then go, actually that’s overpriced. And I’ve got lots of them because they’ve come in bulk and I’ve ordered, you know, the minimum order is 288 or something.

And actually, the way to get rid of them is, so I’m not making a loss on them. They’re still being sold and they’re still profitable, but I think I just not got that pricing quite right. So it’s helped me be a bit more sort of introspective about what is the right price for that particular product.

And also to know that actually for me bulk buying that particular product, it’s not the right product for me. I won’t order those again, that they’re not right. But it’s difficult when something comes in and it’s like, “Oh, actually I might try that, but you’ve got to try 288.”

Catherine Erdly: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Victoria Clark: That’s the minimum order on them. Yeah.

Catherine Erdly: Yeah, and then that’s part of it as well, isn’t it? It’s like being able to run [00:27:00] through things through and say, right? Okay. Well, what’s worked really? Well, what do we need to do more of what perhaps? Do we just not have the demand to meet those minimum orders? Okay, so we’ve got to then make those decisions Do we go somewhere else for this or do we look for?

Do we you know try and get smaller quantities? Or do we just say right this isn’t the right product and just being able to talk those decisions through, I think it’s really important. So just to wrap things up, what would you say if someone was thinking about working with Stock Doctor, but they were feeling nervous or hesitant? Or like they might get.

Victoria Clark: You know what, in the course of other discussions with other traders in the town, I have already recommended the course to two people locally. Just in term, you know, I had a chat with somebody who runs another shop in town. She was like, “Oh, I’ve got all this stock and I can’t sell it.” I was like, “Oh my God, this is what you need to do.”

So I would hundred percent recommend it. Because as you said, it takes that pain out of you. Because it’s such a weight that you [00:28:00] carry as a business owner, as a sole trader, to think I’ve got this stuff and I don’t know what to do with it. Particularly if retail is not necessarily your background.

 It’s like learning a new skill. And this is equipping me with those skills that you and other people in the industry have developed over years. It goes back to that thing with my friend saying it’s just as simple as buying and selling stuff. Well, it is to a certain extent, but actually it’s not.

It depends what it is. And that works up until a certain point because it’s buying stuff, selling it on, but it’s also having the, making sure you’ve got the money to buy it and making sure you can sell it on. And then what happens when you don’t, what do you do? So yes, I’ve already recommended you and I would absolutely just for that clarity.

And I did, you know, I sat down and I went, Oh, this is, you know, this is the cost and chatted it through with my husband. But actually it’s less [00:29:00] than it would cost. It’s like having another member of staff. Basically, it’s like having a part time member of staff who can go in and pull out all that information. Particularly if you’re a spreadsheet and analytics hater, like I would never have got all that information out and do all the the calculations and the things. 

So I would 100 percent recommend it to anyone who’s feeling they’re not in control. It’s like, I think you say this and where you feel like your business is controlling you, not the other way around. Whereas this is enabling me to pull it back within my control. Definitely.

Catherine Erdly: Yes. Absolutely. And that is the purpose of it is that, I mean, the reason I created it as a done for you service, as opposed to say another course or something like that was I felt like actually it’s about time at the end of the day as well, isn’t it? 

It’s like if you’re not an expert in something it takes you so much longer to do it. Then like you’re saying when Paola was zipping around a spreadsheet, I often [00:30:00] it’s easy quick just so much quicker for me to do something in a spreadsheet than someone who’s just not familiar with them. Because it’s like anything, right? 

If you’ve got skills and training in something, you’re going to be faster at it and it’s going to be much more efficient, effectively better use of your time as well. If someone else is looking at that and saying, this is what you need to do. We’re obviously in collaboration with you, but rather than you trying to wade through it and how long that would take you.

Victoria Clark: And I’ve learned from that as well. So, it’s not been done for you and I just sit back and let it happen. It’s been really interesting. I mean, you know, I’ll get my emails afterwards and it’s like so many spreadsheets. And I’ll be like, oh, there’s so many of them. But then in the first sessions, I would say to her, “there’s so many, I’m overwhelmed by them.”

She’s like, ” you don’t need to understand them. This is just to gather the data. I’m pulling it through. And then as we go through, you’ll get to what it is that you need to understand.” At the beginning, it felt quite frightening, but actually now it’s really, you can see the process.

Catherine Erdly: Yes, amazing. Well, Victoria, if people want to go check out [00:31:00] Readymoney Beach Shop online or in person, where should they go?

Victoria Clark: Yeah. So the website is www.readymoneybeachshop.com. The shop, as I said, is in Fowey on the South coast of Cornwall. We’re open every day except Christmas Day. It’s not just beach souvenirs. We’ve got lots of gifts. It’s very gift heavy focus on the website. So yeah, it’d be lovely to see people. 

Catherine Erdly: Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much to Victoria for sharing your. story. It’s always a pleasure to hear more about you and your fabulous shop. If you have listened to this podcast and thought to yourself, do you know what? I could really use some of the support of someone who knows what they’re doing to make sure that I’m buying the right stock and to set me up for success.

Then why not head over to resilientretailclub.com, take a look at the Stock Doctor service, and why not book a call? I would love to hear more about your business and see if stock doctor’s right for you. And of course, if you have a moment to rate and review the podcast, it makes a huge difference to getting out there to more people.

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