Making money as an independent retailer, be it under your own brand or that of a franchise group, is not easy. How do you generate a profit when all around you huge discount stores are offering the same products at lower prices and spending millions on advertising? This book explains how growing your store's profits starts with an understanding of the three-part Critical Retail Formula. The formula is Customer Numbers x Customer Spend x Gross Margin = Gross Profit and you must have a strategy for each of these. What you will learn: - Why mass media advertising is a waste of your time and money - Why putting dots on a map is the best market research - How to become the local guru in your field - How to maintain your gross profit despite a falling customer count - The surprisingly big impact you can achieve on sales just by rearranging your shelves and store layout. - How your next new customer is already standing in front of you i.e. turning browsers into buyers - If you can raise the customer repeat buying rate from 4 to 6 times a year, that's a 50% growth in customer count. This book explains how to do that - Techniques for increasing the spend from each customer - How just simple questions can double sales to each customer - How to improve your gross margin without a buying group or the need to heavily discount your products - Do loyalty programs really work? - How to keep your sales team motivated The book is heavily sectioned for easy reference and packed with low-cost, easy-to-implement ideas. All the ideas come from the author's personal observations of what works and what doesn't. No theory, just real practical stuff! The authors: Paul Watkins has owned and franchised a retail chain, currently co-owns a retail franchise group and has consulted to retail for many years. He is a regular conference speaker and workshop facilitator on the subject. Diego Boniolo is a qualified pharmacist, having owned his own pharmacy, set up a 100 member pharmacy group from scratch and now co-owns a retail group with Paul. Between them, Paul and Diego have seen the good the bad and the ugly of retail practices, observing firsthand what works and what doesn't work.