Margin Magic: Four Steps to Building Greater Profit

Now that we’ve established what the margin is and the role it plays in the success of your catalog operation, let’s examine ways to improve it and increase the bottom line.

Methods That Can Help Improve Your Margin

1. Reduce product costs. One of the quickest ways to improve your margin is to decrease product cost. But this takes cooperation and negotiation with your vendors. This is especially important for items that are marginal in their per-formance and may not make your pickup threshold. If you tell vendors an item isn’t earning its space and may be dropped, you often can get enough cost concession to give the item another chance.