Who

About Us

Marc Beerling is a retailer with 15 years experience in retail. In 2005, he started his own store after 3 years managing someone else's, in a small Canadian city. Offering Mens and Ladies Contemporary as well as Lifestyle, Denim and Footwear, over the years he grew the operation to a footprint of 18,000 sq feet and peak sales just south of 3 million annually. But something was always missing....mainly, cash in the bank. After years of struggle, never having enough cash, struggling to take a paycheck and sometime struggling to make payroll, moving locations several times, enduring a fire, fighting lease disputes that ended up in court, coming through not one but two major economic recessions, (very oil and gas based community), he at long last discovered the golden key of merchandise planning. All of a sudden, the missing pieces began to fall into place, the reasons for cash flow struggles became apparent and the writing was illuminated on the proverbial wall. He was doing it wrong!

Every mistake you can make...

I was doing it wrong! For almost 10 excruciatingly long years, nobody had ever showed me where I was going wrong. Where was my cash? I was paying taxes. Why was there no money to pay them with??!!

Until I was introduced to Merchandise Planning, the secrets to retail sucess would elude me. I had heard people talk about open to buy, but was too ashamed and too fearful of appearing dumb to ask WHAT IT WAS! I was a sophisticated retailer, intent on the processes and procedures of consistency. I embraced and employed the newest technologies. Customer Service was our claim to fame, we had a great reputation for exceeding expectations and delivering and sourcing the very best products. We were profitable....or so said our accountant.

Merchandise planning allowed me to take back time, employ better strategies, reduce my inventory while maintaining or growing my sales, improve margins, retain more cash and eventually SLEEP again at night!

It's never too late...

My only regret in retail was not having started with merchandise planning from the very beginning! How many mistakes would have been avoided? How many hundreds of thousands would I have kept in my own pocket instead of flushing down the drain? Was it already too late to recover? It's never too late. The sooner you can get onboard and begin strategically running your business instead of letting it run you, the quicker the results begin to manifest.

It's not easy! Nothing worthwhile ever is! It will take time and effort.

I was consumed by what I now call the Windex effect. What is the Windex effect? Let me tell you!

We all can be easily consumed by the day to day tasks associated with operating our businesses. We are shopkeepers at this point...not retailers. Our staff, if we are lucky enough to have them, are like the children of our workday, "Daddy where's my socks? Daddy where's the peanut butter?" - "Boss, where's the windex?" You get the point. I was constantly bogged down with the day to day instead of taking the time to look ahead and strategically run my business. My business was runnning me.

Then I made one simple phone call. A few years later.... I take them!
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