The retail industry has been experiencing a survival challenge during all this pandemic and economic lockdown situation. The retail economy in Nigeria hasn’t thrived to the full potential yet and it poses serious existential crisis to the masses and the middle class exclusively.
Physical retail stores were allowed to operate with quite limitations and people often opting for online shopping, there are quite some challenges faced by the small business retailers. Many of the services and products that were once part of a strong retail presence are now easily available online and nothing can’t be done much about this.
While the Nigerian digital economy is taking up its long-awaiting position too as cryptocurrency and bitcoin trading are largely popular with the young generation. Platforms like the bitcoin revolution website offer various convenient services that make cryptocurrency trading profitable and sustainable. The same kind of tech revolution needs to occur in the retail industry so it can thrive. Let’s look at some of the strategies that can be used to avert the risks posed to the retail economy.
Adapting technological solutions is the way to go
For each of the retailers who want to make his business scalable and sustainable, he needs to adapt to the tech solutions and software. For real growth, you need to be worried much lesser about the running of operations and instead put a focus on the growth.
If your business still doesn’t have an accounting or inventory management store, you can’t be sure of the fact that your business is running profitably. This is why it is necessary to keep track of the stock and all the business costs for data-based future decision making.
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Selling Online
While customers are looking for similar businesses like you in the online domain, a retail business should have a resilient presence out there. You can also become part of the E-commerce stores in Nigeria to make profits from other platforms. A business can have its website and social media profiles too to acquire new customers directly. Currently, you may have a budget shortage as things have been quite difficult for some time.
Businesses going digital can find new customers for themselves while the prime goal is to retail their existing customers already. The expertise and initial costs may be high but this is the only sustainable retailing model that can be found currently. Promotional strategies also differ over traditional marketing but things are quite interesting to learn.
Focused Expansion Strategies
The concept of related and unrelated diversification has a great role to play in retail businesses. While business owners want to grow and have a sound income stream, they can’t spend relentlessly on business expansion and promotions. If they move with a focused approach while keeping a strict check on their costs and applying maximum resources where profit yield is maximum, it will have numerous benefits.
There is a dire need to deal with things with a sound strategy, future forecasting, and planning. We often miss out on data analyses to become part of our decision-making process. Intuition can be the fluke sometimes but high competitiveness has ruled out many things that used to work out before. Right modern retailing practices along with the application of IT tools is the right way to ensure long term survival for the retail economy.
