In today’s ultra-competitive market, motor factors should understand how crucial availability and range is. Spring supplier Kilen gives PMF readers an insight into its re-profiling service, enabling its customers to stay ahead of the curve.
Regular range re-profiling for a factor will increase its car parc coverage and ensure it meets more orders direct from the shelf, reducing waiting times for customers, and increasing sales. Every Kilen stockist is offered a bespoke, bi-annual range re-profiling service to ensure their Kilen ranges are continually updated with the bestselling references, meaning the most popular springs are on the shelf and ready to go.
The range re-profiling exercise starts with a review of the customer’s annual sales and current stock holding. Customers typically set a minimum and maximum stock quantity for each part, and run a system to automatically reorder daily to the maximum.
Kilen imports the customer’s data into a template based on Kilen’s latest Pareto, which is updated quarterly. This allows a review into which springs are gaining in popularity (climbers) and which are becoming less popular (fallers).
Once the customer’s data has been analysed, Kilen can answer two important questions:
- Which springs are selling but are not on the shelf?
- Which springs are on the shelf but should be removed?
The first step when re-profiling is to identify popular references which are not on the shelf – these will be flagged to add to stock immediately, replacing the furthest-falling springs on a like-for-like basis to ensure no increased stock holding – unless the customer wants to increase their total range to catch more sales.
Next, taking account of the customers’ shelf space available, and any budgetary concerns, Kilen will recommend the best possible profile. This typically ranges from a very small profile of 150 references to a comprehensive range of more than 1,100 references at a branch.
If, for example, a customer wanted to maintain the top 750 references in stock, Kilen would identify all parts in the top 750 which they don’t currently stock and recommend that the customer add a pair of each to their profile. Any springs that are on the shelf but outside the top 750, and have not sold in the previous 12 months, are recommended for cleanse.
Kilen attempts to balance stock coming out with stock going in by replacing any references which have fallen out of the agreed profile with references that have entered the agreed range. However, Kilen always recommends that any references which are due to be removed, but which have climbed by fifty Pareto places or more in the past 12 months, be considered by the customer first.
Finally, any overstocks are identified – these are springs with more than two units in stock, but with sales of less than two per year, or any springs with more stock than the customer’s set maximum – generally due to returns. Anything over the maximum level is cleansed, or the maximum level is increased in line with sales.
Kilen has seen that the correct profile grows sales and increases margins since less same day distress purchases are needed. Kilen urges factors to utilise its service to ensure their profile is up to date!
