No theory, no fluff. Each guide is something we learned on real till data, written so you can use it on Monday.
A 30% markup is not a 30% margin. Buy at €1.00, sell at €1.30 and your margin is 23%, not 30%. Price a whole department that way against a 30% margin target and you are 7 points short on every line. On €10,000 of monthly sales in that department, that gap is roughly €700 a month, gone before you open the door. Rule of thumb: to get a margin of X%, divide cost by (1 minus X as a decimal). For 30%: cost ÷ 0.70.
Suppliers rarely announce small increases. A bottle goes up 9c, a case goes up 40c, and the shelf price stays where it was. Each change is too small to notice and too costly to ignore. In our pilot store, one 11c increase left unpriced for three weeks cost about €63, and there were 14 lines like it in a single month. The fix is boring and effective: check every invoice against your last cost, and reprice the same day.
A line that has not sold in 12 months is not an asset. It is cash you already spent, sitting on a shelf that could hold something that sells. The pilot scan found 240+ dead lines, including one product last sold 14 months ago still holding two facings. Clear it, even at cost. The money and the shelf space both go back to work.
Moving a deli roll from €3.50 to €3.79 feels risky until you know the numbers. Footfall on staples barely moves for sub 10% changes, and .49/.79/.99 endings read as normal prices to shoppers. The rule: start from the margin target, round to the nearest charm ending, and check the yearly impact before you decide. One 29c change on a high volume line was worth about €1,940 a year in the pilot.
More guides are on the way. Want one written for your kind of shop? Tell us what would help.
Send a standard export from your till and get your first margin scan the same day. No new hardware, no lock in.
Book a free margin scan