Friday 14 June 2013

€1m revenue at tuck shop with captive audience

How they hit the numbers in Dublin’s Mountjoy jail-shop
Figures just released indicate that whilst sales revenues dipped by 7% to €1.2m in 2012, profits increased by 17% to €124k, making a Net Margin of 10.1%. Annual sales per shopper worked out at €2,268 per shopper, based on an average guest-list of 540 members, with high levels of store-loyalty, and little evidence of promiscuous shopping behaviour.

How do they achieve these results?
  • Availability: with a shopper mix that includes murderers and other individuals prone to violent expression of their needs, zero-defect availability records are second to none…
  • Shopper behaviour: In common with other retail, the shop can not only track customer movements before and during the shopping process, but has the additional advantage of being able to predict future location of the shopper 24/7 with a high degree of certainty…
  • Shrinkage: given the degrees of shopper expertise, it is not too clear if shrinkage levels are equal to, or exceed international  averages
  • Tight offering: despite latent demand for basic DIY tools and general outdoor gear, categories are limited to toiletries, cigarettes, tea bags, biscuits, and other items
  • Database: the company database possesses degrees of customer insight a normal retailer could die for…including finger-prints, DNA samples, previous ‘form’, membership of affinity-groups, etc
  • Payment: perhaps understandably, no money changes hands between the prison-officer manning the hatch and prisoners; all purchases are made ‘on tick’, with no reported instances of any difficulties in enforcing payment on due-dates, via cell-visit, if necessary…
NAM precautions
NAMs conducting store checks in ‘The Joy’ should exercise caution at all times and would be well advised to supress any inclination towards aisle-rage, queue-jumping and even gentle interrogation of fellow shoppers…

Moreover, dressing down for a store-check is not advised in order to avoid any possible misunderstandings when attempting to leave the facility…

Meanwhile, just-in-case, have a get-away weekend from the NamNews Team!

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