New And Existing Item Productivity

Here's comp segment productivity for existing items.

We can see the dip last year - which coincides with the de-emphasis in existing items - followed by improved productivity this year.

If productivity of existing items improved, then productivity of new items had to have declined, right? Let's take a look.

Oh my goodness, dear readers. Look at what happened in the past five months!

There's the problem.

That's the story for why this business stalled in the past half-year.

Productivity of new items is in the tank - and is REALLY in the tank.

Compare last year to two years ago - look at the gains in new merchandise productivity.

We've applied very simple diagnostics to identify three problems with this business.

1. Existing items were cut back 18-30 months ago, resulting in demand declines.
2. New items were throttled 0-5 months ago, resulting in demand declines.
3. Marketing is not doing a good enough job of identifying new + reactivated buyers.

These are simple diagnostics to run - and they quickly point out what the business problem is and WHEN the business problem began. We can fix our business problems when we know what went wrong and when something went wrong!