The Retail Owners Institute®
The Retail Owners Institute® is a web-based resource at www.RetailOwner.com.  Now the "foremost self-help resource" on retail finance, The ROI® serves independent retailers worldwide, 24/7.  With its emphasis on the basics of retail finance, inventory management and cash flow control, The ROI is particularly relevant to owners and decision-makers of retail operations with up to 100 stores (especially those who may be accounting-averse!)  The ROI has been called "a WebMD for retail owners." 

By Retailers, for Retailers. 24/7
The ROI's information and resources about the business of stores is simply unmatched.  It serves a fast-growing audience of more than 20,000 unique visitors each month from around the world.  These decision-makers are seeking practical information on how to better control their retail business. 

• more than 48 in-depth articles by retail experts on retail financial management and control
• more than 200 webpages of content exclusively for independent retailers, available 24/7, worldwide
  
• performance benchmarks for 50 separate retail segments/verticals
• online "calculators": key ratios, GMROI, turnover, cash flow, P&L planner
  
• OTB Calculator™ for merchandise buying (Open-to-Buy) plans online
  

Is Your Organization Dependent on Independent Retailers?
In addition, The ROI offers special programs for organizations and associations that serve independent retailers.  These include:

• The ROI 24/7 All-Access Program;
• Content for CRM Programs for vendors, suppliers, resellers to retailers;
• "Retail Owner Excellence" webinars;
• Display advertising opportunities on The ROI site
• Onsite training workshops by The ROI Co-Founders

The content featured at The ROI is the proprietary intellectual property of Outcalt & Johnson: Retail Strategists, LLC.  It is focused exclusively on retail, and specifically on financial issues that are unique to retailers.

Why do retailers and store owners come to The ROI site?  They don’t want to fail! 

They are seeking solutions for their toughest retail business issues. They want help with inventory control, cash flow, turnover, creditors, and more.  And, they recognize that The ROI is organized efficiently by retailers, for retailers. 

Timeless, How-To, In-Depth Resource
Over 80% of each month’s Unique Visitors to The ROI are New Visitors. This indicates that the users of The ROI are seeking business solutions for immediately-pressing issues.  And, it also suggests that The ROI is attracting a “renewable resource” of fresh retail decision-makers seeking business solutions.

The ROI website presently is attracting 20,000+ unique visitors per month, generating more than 67,000 page views.  RetailOwner.com site users are also in-depth users, spending time and attention at The ROI.  Remarkably, the average visitor is on The ROI site for 4-1/2 minutes!  The ROI's in-depth information about the business of stores is simply unmatched.

In addition, The ROI News, an electronic newsletter, is received by 6,500 opt-in subscribers each month.
 
Who Uses The ROI Site?

• 90% are in retail management
• 51% are single-store operators; 32% have 2-5 stores; 16% have 11+ stores
• 8% were start-ups; 32% had “this business” 1 to 5 years; 61% had been in business 6+ years
• 35% had annual sales volume of $500,000 – $2,500,000; 31% have sales of $2.5 million+
• 91% have computer at their office, and 84% have high speed internet at the office; 53% have a computer at home, and 57% have high speed internet access at home
• Respondents represented 22 of the 56 retail segments (verticals)

Content and Tools Specifically for Store Owners
The ROI is "By Retailers, For Retailers." 

• Benchmark numbers for 50 separate retail segments.  See how your store compares on these key financial ratios
• Forty how-to financial management articles by retail experts on the key survival issues for retailers (especially profits, cash, and inventory control)
• Online calculators customized for retailers. Available nowhere else.  Key Ratios Calculator; GMROI & Turnover Calculator; OTB Calculator (inventory buying "Open-to-Buy" plans); Retail Cash Flow Calculator; P&L (Profit & Loss) Planner
  
• The Short Course on the Basics of Retail Finance
  Interactive, self-paced tutorial on the basics of retail finance: income statement, balance sheet, inventory buying, cash flow, ratio analysis, financial projections.  Includes 14 self-quizzes, over 30 printable worksheets, 11 supplemental how-to articles, and a case study (The I. M. Surviving(?!) Co.) 
  
• "Retail Business Insights" from the Co-Founders of The ROI
• Glossary of Retail Terms
• The ROI Guides are full-color, 8-page booklets packed with usable information on specific retail issues.  The Crisis Guide provides a self-diagnosis tool for evaluating your store's business condition, and then specific action steps to turn around your business.  The GMROI Guide teaches the #1 measure of inventory productivity, and takes it to a new level as well.  Download, print out, and distribute at your next staff meeting!

The Key Issues “Landing Pages”
The ROI site is designed on a retailer-friendly hub-and-spoke system.  The “hubs” are the 14 “Landing Pages” of The ROI that focus on business issues of particular relevance to store owners .  Each of these Key Issues Landing Pages is a gateway to in-depth how-to information and resources on that particular topic. 

The most frequented Key Issues Landing Pages are :

• Inventory Control, Open-to-Buy, Turnover -- 16-20% of page views monthly
• Financial Tools & Tips -- 9-10%  
  
• Sales and More Sales -- 8-12% 
  
• Better Store Management -- 8-10%  
  
• Understanding Financial Basics -- 7-10% 
  
• GMROI -- 7-8%   
  
• Be a Better Owner --7-8%       
  
• Controlling Cash -- 7-8%    

The “Segments Pages”
ROI site visitors also are seeking benchmarks and other data specific to their retail vertical. The ROI site features 50 separate retail segments, from hardware stores to bookstores, clothing stores, gift shops, wine stores, music stores, furniture stores, etc. One of each four visitors to The ROI site spends time in one or more Retail Segments.
 
In these Segment Pages, The ROI displays five-year trends of performance metrics for independent retailers, focusing on the six key ratios of particular importance for retailers to monitor.  Additionally, The ROI calculates the benchmark GMROI (Gross Margin Return on Inventory Investment) for each of these fifty retail verticals.

The Retail Owners Institute® warns that the relentless effect of “Retail Darwinism” – the survival of only the fittest, and the most adaptable – continues to drive more small, independent retailers out of business. They fail despite having appealing stores, merchandise, employees and customers. In fact, over a third of the retailers that file bankruptcy even have profits!

So why are these small retailers failing? Because they run out of cash. They do not have financial planning sophistication. The Retail Owners Institute (www.RetailOwner.com) is on a mission to change that. Web-based, it is the foremost self-help resource for retail business issues. The ROI® is empowering smaller retailers with financial sophistication never before available. Most important, The ROI is available virtually; any retailer worldwide has 24/7 access via the internet.

Consider this:

• A buyer at Costco seeks to raise gross margins by tenths of a percent. The small retailer may not know how to compute gross margin, let alone manage it!
• A buyer at Wal-Mart will “kill” to get inventory turn one or two tenths higher than the year before by squeezing their suppliers. There isn’t one independent retailer in twenty who even calculates inventory turns.
• Starbucks, The Gap, Coldwater Creek and other pros always generate cash flow projections when considering lease renewals. Few small retailers know how to do a cash flow.

“Small retailers just endure the financial outcomes of their business decisions,” says Dick Outcalt, Co-Founder of The ROI. “Few independent retailers know HOW to change those outcomes; fewer still realize they CAN affect their own financial future. Unlike their big box or national chain competitors, few know the financial implications of their decisions before they make them. No wonder they fail!”

Thanks to its free information and effective explanatory style, The ROI enables small retailers anywhere in the world – for the first time ever – to direct their own financial future.

The ROI is unleashing this new “Retail Populism”, empowering the small retailer with financial knowledge and prowess. The relentless sweep of Retail Darwinism will continue. However, small retailers who use The ROI can become included among those fittest that survive.

Gift Shop Manager, Large Regional Hospital

Just 2 articles made the difference between a $4,000 gain and a $102,000 loss.  It was wonderful!  Plus, we discovered that we paid for 2006 goods in 2007.  The Finance Department now will correct that error. 

Store Manager, Office Supplies

I found a lot of interesting and useful information for a person who runs a business.  Lots of additional knowledge you easily can get.

Owner/President, Outdoor Power Equipment Store

This is extremely helpful and worthwhile.

Retail Consultant

The industy data is extremely important and helpful.  (It also saves me time from having to go to a public library to look it up.)  We use it to identify the benchmarks for the companies we work with.

Camera Store Owner

We finally implemented an inventory control system which was necessitated by a downturn in the photo retailing sector.  This has allowed us to decrease our inventory in a controlled manner.

College Student

It's fantastic!

Service Manager, Motorcycle Dealer

It makes you think.

Sales Training Director, Convenience Stores

Concise and to the point; very good for the folks I work with.

Internal Auditor-Inventory, Tractor Manufacturer

This can give much benefit to our organization.

Owner/President, Apparel & Accessories Store

Well done.  Easy to understand.

Patricia M. Johnson, CMC and Richard F. Outcalt, CMC
Co-Founders, The Retail Owners Institute^®

Pat Johnson and Dick Outcalt, the Co-Founders of The ROI®, are recognized experts in strategic retailing.  Working only as a team – Outcalt & Johnson: Retail Strategists, LLC – they have been consulting, publishing, and speaking professionally throughout North America since 1990. They focus exclusively on retail, or wherever retail is involved. They work with CEOs, CFOs, boards and owners of retail operations, as well as manufacturers or wholesalers expanding into retail, retail property owners or developers, equity partners, and lending institutions.  In addition:

• Their how-to articles on retail management have been purchased and published more than 1,100 times by trade publications from more than 40 separate retail niches;
• They have been retained by associations and organizations to present their concepts at conferences and trade shows, reaching more than 10,000 independent retailers;
• Outcalt & Johnson have been quoted regarding retail issues in Business Week, Time Magazine, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, as well as local and regional publications;
• And, on four different occasions, Pat & Dick have been invited by The National Retail Federation to speak at its annual international show and conference in New York City.

Pat Johnson is a graduate of Whitman College, and founded her own strategic planning consulting practice in 1976, working with businesses and institutions based in the Pacific Northwest. Prior to that, she was an officer of a national bank, director of a college news service, and co-published a national newsletter for practicing design professionals. She has served as a trustee of an independent K-8 school in Seattle.  Pat is a Certified Management Consultant, the highest accreditation in management consulting, and is a member of the Institute of Management Consultants and the National Retail Federation.

Dick Outcalt is a graduate of Duke University, and earned an MBA in retailing from the University of Pittsburgh. He was an executive for a national department store organization, and for ten years was owner/operator of three independent specialty stores. In 1977, he formed his own private consulting practice (thus making him the "junior" partner of OJRS).  He was president of both the Foundation for Private Enterprise Education and a national board member of the Institute of Management Consultants, Washington, D.C. He is a Certified Management Consultant, the highest accreditation in management consulting, and is a member of the Institute of Management Consultants and the National Retail Federation.