In the Easier with BookNet blog series, we highlight tips, tricks, and features from our products and services that can help you not only optimize time and resources but also make your job effortless.

When considering improving the efficiency of a bookstore’s inventory, a good measure is the “stock turn” — this number tells you how many times the store’s inventory has been flipped in a given time period. It can be a very helpful indicator for you to see at a glance how your inventory is doing and in effect how your store is doing. Are the books selling or have they been sitting on the shelves for too long? Most industries have a benchmark to measure against and the book retail space is no different. An annual turnover rate of between 2.5 and 5 is a healthy range to aim for.

Stock turns are a performance indicator focused on two things: Purchasing and sales. By tracking stock turns, bookstores and publishers can optimize their inventory levels, reduce holding costs, and ensure they have the right mix of titles to meet customer demand while maximizing profitability.

There are lots of reasons to pay attention to stock turns but the biggest reason is that your inventory is your biggest investment, and there are costs associated with having too much inventory that doesn’t sell efficiently (storage, damage, theft, handling costs, etc.). There are also repercussions if you don’t have enough inventory.

A stock turn is an indicator that helps you determine the velocity or efficiency of your inventory. You can use the stock turn to look at your entire inventory, or you could also use it to see how different categories are doing, or how certain experiments paid off — all that hard work you do to inform and provide service to your community is, in a way, quantifiable — so how do you quantify it?

SalesData is BookNet’s national sales tracking service for the Canadian English-language trade book market. To calculate stock turn using SalesData, use the Bestseller report. Using the multi-week, peer view criteria, the stock turn formula is:

(Total Units sold for the period selected / Total Units on hand for the period selected) x 52

While calculating your stock turns is the first step to see how you measure up against the benchmarks we mentioned above, here are a few other BookNet tools at your disposal that can help you improve your stock turn.

CataList purchase decision support

CataList is an online catalogue service and order management tool that helps provide support for purchase decision making. When publishers create their lists to sell, they have the ability to add comparable titles as an aid on the title page in CataList. When logged in (with a free retailer account!) you’ll be able to see their suggestions and you can even add your own comp titles. CataList also pulls in data for these comp titles from SalesData that can help you determine what your initial buy should be. This can be a very helpful tool at that initial buy stage when it's hard to determine how much you should buy.

CataList also displays stock availability data that it accesses from our service called PandA. PandA stands for Price and Availabilty. We receive inventory data from distributors that will help you see what the stock situation is like at the warehouse. This data will help you when you are looking for the quickest access to the products you want to order.

SalesData Gap Analysis Report

The Gap Analysis report for inventory performance is the place where we might find those books in inventory that are hiding in the corners, afraid to come out. Products with a low turnover ratio should be evaluated periodically to see if the stock is obsolete. Our Gap Analysis report can help you zero in on dead stock.

The image above is a 13 week report comparing against the independent market. This way you can see whether your On Hands should be put on the return shelf or perhaps you should reposition the title in the store. Is the book still performing well in the comparison market? There are lots of filters you can add to these reports to refine things by pub date, price point, format, etc. You can look at it by subject, by distributor, publisher, or even by Canadian Contributor.

You could also use the Buying Gaps report to zero in on titles you’ve missed buying or sections you want to beef up. In the sample below, the subject filters are applied to just look at Fantasy and Science Fiction and the date filter is on for books published between January and April.

The third report for Gap analysis, the Bestseller Gap report, is also helpful. This report shows you the bestselling titles in your comparison market and their sales and inventory in your home market during the selected reporting period. In the sample below, the comparison market is All Markets searching specifically for Juvenile titles in the available BISAC categories for indigenous content. The Canadian Titles filter has also been added. Then the results were sorted using the On Hand column to see the titles that may be missing from the inventory. Although we’re comparing against the All Market we have also included the Independent channel in the results so that we have that group to look at as well.

The SalesData Bestseller report is also a great way to check for the sell-through rate of your titles. Knowing the percent sell through of specific titles provides a window into dead stock or stock that is flying out the door. This can be a great tool to help improve the performance of a category or an individual title. When using the single-week criteria for a specific retailer, the percent sell through formula is:

Units sold in the given period / (On Hand in the given period + Units Sold in the given period)

We hope this has helped you see how you can leverage stock turns and these BookNet tools and reports to manage and improve your inventory. Looking for even more actionable tips to leverage the power of BookNet’s products and services? Start by reading other instalments of our Easier with BookNet blog series here, and don’t hesitate to get in touch with your specific questions. We’re here to help you succeed!