How to Spot Great Merchants

Analytical Ability

The most effective merchant is skewed more heavily toward the analytical side than the intuition side — usually 60/40. Many executives think merchandising happens in a black box and that merchants just somehow know what products to pick.

But to be really effective at building a business, you must know how to analyze it, and such analysis requires math skills and an analytical approach. Merchants spend most of their time with a calculator negotiating costs, calculating margins, determining price points, projecting quantities, monitoring turn rates and watching inventory levels. Unless yours is a large organization with a lot of staff support, merchants won’t succeed in the long-term if they can’t get their minds around the numbers.