How To Keep Your Retail Operating Cost Low?

Rental and labour cost in Singapore is ever rising and is the bane of brick and mortar retail business owners. Retail operators are always racing to find ways to keep their business costs low to keep their profitability up.

In this article, we will suggest some methods which you can use to keep your retail operations cost low.

Focus on customer retention

Often, retail operators will focus on customer acquisition instead of customer retention. Even though customer acquisition is essential to any business, customer retention will reap more financial rewards as it costs significantly more to engage a new customer than to re-engage an existing customer.

Not only will you save on customer engagement, but also, repeat customers are more likely to spend more than first time customers. Hence, it is crucial that you do not overlook customer retention and balance your efforts between customer acquisition and retention.

Go through your expenses and cut away non essential ones

It is easy to unknowingly incur expenses that are non essential and are just good to have. A good practise would be to go through all your business expenses from time to time to find out these unnecessary spendings to keep your operational costs low.

Expenses like internet, phone lines, cashless payment terminals, utility, etc., may be important to your retail operations, but it is good to ensure that you are not overspending on them as well. Occasionally look for the best deals and offers you could get on these business expenses to make sure you are not being overcharged.

Reduce shipping costs

Most of the time, retailers like yourself get products from overseas factories or suppliers. Hence, you should keep your shipping costs low. Here are some ways you could do so:

1. Find a right shipping provider which offers low shipping costs while ensuring safe shipping of your goods. You wouldn't want your shipment to arrive damaged would you?
2. Use air shipping only if needed. Unless your goods are time sensitive i.e. expiry dates, or you are running low on stock. Sea shipping, although takes a longer time to arrive, is more cost effective.
3. Buy in bulk to maximize your shipping costs. Often, your goods are packed into crates or containers and it is a good practice to work with the shipping company to find out how you can maximize the crate/container space by ordering the right amount of goods to fill up all the space you have.
4. Optimize packaging if you can. Work with your supplier if possible to pack your goods to take up as little space and weigh as little as possible. This will help you ship more at a lower cost

Get a centralized operation management solution

Retail operations often require you to manage multiple aspects of your business such as inventory, sales, customers, staff and accounting. There are softwares in the market that are specifically made to manage each aspect.

However, getting one solution for each aspect of your retail operations will increase your retail operation cost. An enhanced cloud based POS system, like MEGAPOS will help you centralize your operational management through comprehensive features and reports accessible through an online portal.

A POS system with such capabilities boosts your operations management productivity, cost effectiveness and allows you to stay connected with your retail business from anywhere at any time.

If you are interested in the benefits of getting a MEGAPOS to centralize your retail operations, drop MEGAPOS your contact details below and we will be happy to arrange a free demo session with you!