If you have ever taken a coast guard basic seamanship course for family boating , one important part is charting your course. You learn how to plot tide changes and wind speed, to guide your sailboat to a desired longitude and latitude or your powerboat to a favorite gas dock. Your marine charts are where you plot your course; and the wind and tide are the variables you have to consider for a successful arrival. The charts that you apply your calculations to are available at just about any nautical shop or website. These charts are your road-map of the water you will travel on.

In May of 1989 I joined a company that had survived, prospered, grown for almost eight decades, I was also privileged to work with and become a friend of the Board Chairman Mr. (AJ) Richard. He taught

me many things about retail, based on his personal experience. During the sixteen years we spent working together; I listened, learned and adapted. One of our early discussions was about the wind and the tides of retail; his charts were some fifty or more years of scrap books. He swore by them, referenced them, and we learned from them. I planned and charted the patterns of the company until early 2005. We had an in-house computer department and a group of talented programmers; working in conjunction with them I was able to develop a day by day, hour by hour, data base, and proprietary programs that provided a complete set of analytics. I used those reports in comparison with our baseline of historical records. After leaving my position I developed a set of excel based analytics adapted and used today for Etail and Retail.

No matter what the business or where it operates “they are living breathing things” they have a history that tells a story, that story is the basis for its “demographics” all the other ancillary information is like the “wind and the tides” and the more you understand them the better you can manage your operation. When you commit to understanding your company’s business cycles you will soon find out national and international industry demographics are great for setting benchmarks but your home-built and home monitored system are all about your companies Heartbeat! As Etail and retail continue to evolve understanding the winds, tides, and demographics will become more and more important.

Just recently I was evaluating year over year numbers for Cow Performance Company. Usually brisk business had fallen sharply on a few days in July. This was right before the national demos of Amazon Prime days were made public; we immediately knew they had an effect on our business. Two weeks later the market was abuzz with the success of “prime days” capturing over seventy percent of all Etail business in that time period. The level of business that was affected was microscopic when compared to Amazon however the effect still showed up. Every Etail and Retailer should be noting and addressing how this might affect them next year and plan their direction.

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