of stuff. Some of the reps called me and said,“ You know, we loved your mom. We want to help you. Send me your inventory list.”
I sent the reps my list and a lot of them walked me through it. That was such a wonderful gift, because I didn’ t know what I should keep and what I should return. If you are a new store owner, ask your reps to walk you through it. Your reps really want to help you out because they’ re only going to be as successful as you are.
How to Do Returns How you do returns depends on your goals. I would advise you not to do an entire inventory report and return everything that is“ old.” That method would overwhelm you to the point where you wouldn’ t want to do any returns. Smaller, manageable returns are a lot easier.
To start, I’ ll choose a publisher or a specific genre and look at those titles I have a lot of. If a sales rep is coming with new releases, I’ ll often review that publisher’ s inventory first to identify what should be returned. I also try to see if a title is going to be advertised again in one of our store catalogs down the road. Then I go through the following steps:
Return Checklist ☐ Choose one publisher ☐ Print inventory report ☐ Check last sale date ☐ Remove duplicate copies ☐ Pull outdated editions ☐ Identify returnable books ☐ Process returns ☐ Decide what to reorder ☐ Use credit intentionally ☐ Schedule next month’ s publisher
Keep good records of what you’ re returning. Then if there are any problems with the return, you can follow up.
The other day, one of my workers said,“ You’ re always doing returns.” That’ s because it’ s a revolving door. You always have stuff coming in, so you always have stuff going out. I would prefer it to go out via the cash register, but if it’ s not, then I have to figure out other ways to keep fresh inventory in the store. Returns work for me. CRA
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