Tame Your Tiger

Book excerpt: Does your product business feel unpredictable, slightly terrifying, and hungry for money? If so, you’re not alone. Retail is the fastest growing small business sector, and for good reason. With accessible selling technology and billions of people shopping online, reaching your ideal customer is easier than ever before. But the truth is that making money in a product business is harder than it first appears. And without profits, your business becomes incredibly difficult to manage and almost impossible to grow. Fortunately for you, big retailers have spent decades developing methods of monitoring profit margins, forecasting and growing sales and managing stock to maximise their bottom line. In this book, small-business retail expert Catherine Erdly shows you how to easily apply those big business tools and perspectives to understand your business, get clear on what you need to do to grow profitably, and, ultimately, tame your tiger.