Fresh starts and new beginnings in your screen printing shop.
Clean slates, resolutions, goals, new ideas.
That’s what the new year brings to your business. These buzz words seem contagious this time of the year in the industry. Often times, your business might be slow enough around the holidays to let you work on the business for the new year and start fresh.
Let’s talk about some figures and metrics that you should start tracking on a monthly basis this upcoming year. By looking at your business under a microscope, you’ll be able to develop new ways and ideas to grow and stay profitable this year.
1. Cost of Goods Sold
Cost of goods sold (cogs) are the direct expenses of the materials used in your business to produce finished products. This figure should start turning into a trackable percentage that you report month over month. If your labor is fixed, you can include it or track it separately. Shoot to keep this percentage as low as possible, and try to beat it month over month.
2. Volume Produced Per Week
This number is fun. You should see highs and lows throughout the year, but it gives you a financial measurement of how much you can get done in a week. You might find that you worked incredibly hard and barely produced anything. Or you may have a week that yields a high financial figure with lower input. This way you can start to measure what your sweet spot looks and feels like.
3. Volume Produced Per Day
This is a number that will definitely surprise you as you find your shop work ethic throughout the week through dollars and cents. You might find patterns in your business and you may see that a certain day of the week yields the most volume. Our industry is not like the typical one where Fridays are relaxed! See if you can spread out the workload so you are not burning your team out as deadlines approach.
4. Volume Produced Per Hour
Want to get ultra detailed on your shop’s performance? Start calculating your volume produced per week by the number of working hours your shop is open. Figure out down to the hour how efficient and profitable your shop is by this figure.
5. Average Job Size
In some regards, smaller size jobs, while still profitable, can be time wasters. Theoretically speaking, you would be more profitable producing one, 100 piece order, over 100 single piece orders. Therefore it is important you know your average job size. This helps your sales department understand what benchmarks they need to be hitting when working with customers. If you can bring that average job size up slightly, month over month, it will make a drastic difference.
6. Top 10 Largest Customers
Every month you should track who your top 10 largest customers are. Have this in a noteworthy spot in your office so you can constantly keep them at the forefront of your priorities. Larger customers need more attention, so if their names are visible, you will be more likely to support them to a further degree. You can also start to see customers that climb up the ladder.
7. New Customers vs. Returning Customers
While you want to constantly gain new customers, it is important to see how many of your customers are returning. Each month you should run a report to show how many of your customers are re-ordering from you, and how many new customers you began working with. This can allow you to create a more concentrated marketing approach to these two customers groups.
8. Year-to-date Sales Compared Last Year
This is the number you should have memorized. On a monthly basis, you should know how much you sold for in the past in comparison to what you are projecting to do that same month this upcoming year. If you can continue to make small victories in your business, you will see your sales volume continue to increase.
Need help working on these figures? Reach out to us! We’d love to help you.
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