GOAL SETTING SERIES: Evaluating Your Bridal Shop’s Sales

Are you in a sales slump or slay situation?

How were your sales last year/quarter/month? This is an important question to be asking yourself on a recurring schedule. It’s not always a fun question to answer and it may draw out some emotion, but it will definitely be worth it!

Whether you are slaying in sales or in a bit of a slump, it’s important to evaluate your bridal shops’s sales numbers to understand what you can do to improve and/or what you should keep doing.

The “Covid Bubble”

With the last bit of the Covid effect playing out, the wedding industry is still feeling the impact. With a down turn in dating during 2020 and 2021, postponed weddings now winding down, we are now seeing a decline in engagements. Couples on average date 3.25 years before the big question is ‘popped’.

With a quick google search, you’ll see in publications like, CNN and the New York Times have reported on the decline of traditional weddings and engagements due to the of COVID and the increase in inflation.

If your bridal shop has felt a dip in sales due to the these economic and post pandemic factors, here are a few key things you can evaluate to ensure you are making positive changes for your bridal store this year.

Step One:

Analyze your sales data

Take a look at your sales average data. This will help you see what your sales are month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year.

When looking at your store’s sales average numbers, ask yourself these questions:

• Are there any trends or seasonality?
• Do your sales averages per ticket surprise you?
• Did you expect it to be higher or lower?
• Could they be higher??

As a Poppy user, you can use your Sales Averages Report.

Step Two:

Know your bridal customers’ budgets

Look at the trends in your brides’ budgets. As a bridal shop owner, you sometimes hear from staff words like “everyone’s budget was too low” and that’s a reason they aren’t selling. However, make sure your data is telling you the same story and ask yourself:

• Are budgets actually low?
• If you look at budgets for the year on a line chart, is there a trend happening?
• Are you surprised by the trends you are seeing?

When we feel like “everyone is low”, it might actually be that overall budgets are up. So when it’s when those few brides come into your bridal store with a low budget, you just feel the hurt a little bit more.

As a Poppy user, you can look at your Budget Trend Report

Step Three:

Look at your sales ticket trends

How are your sales tickets trending month by month? Do you see a steady increase, a steady decrease, are they all over the board for this year?

This insight can help you put some clues together as to what’s going on with your overall cash flow and how to make changes at your bridal shop.

As a Poppy user, you can use your Ticket Trend Report

Step Four:

Compare your brides’ budgets verses your store sales

Lastly, let’s get into some next level data digging, by analyzing what your customers budgets are versus what they are buying.

Looking at these numbers, you should be able to see if your stylists might be leaving money on the table or if they are maximizing every sale. If brides are being undersold, why? Or are they not underselling, but that you need to increase your profit by marking up your dresses a bit more?

As a Poppy user, you can look at your Budget vs Spend Report.

Understanding your sales data can be a motivating way to make positive changes at your bridal shop, or an encouraging factor in knowing you are on the right track!

Ready to see how Poppy Bridal software can help you make better data driven decisions for your bridal store? Book a demo or fill out our inquiry form to get started!