While there are many ways to succeed in retailing, retail failures have only one cause: financial!

Whether you are a retailer looking for options, a start-up looking ahead, or are developing a business plan, you need answers. "How much profit might we have?" "How much debt?" "How much inventory do we need? And when?" "How much cash will we have?"

Financial modeling (comparing assorted projections) is an essential part of strategic planning, new business launches, and business turnarounds.  Yet to date, only the largest publicly-held retailers can afford the systems and people to accomplish this.

Financial modeling templates that do exist for "small businesses" are not adequate for retailers, as they do not incorporate inventory management. (Inventory represents 65-80% of the typical retailers total assets.)

As a result, a high percentage of independent retailers run their stores as if driving at night with their headlights out!  Accountants might help them to know financially where they have been. But the dynamics and rapid changes in retailing require ready access to looking ahead with "what if...?" financial planning.

That is why Outcalt & Johnson: Retail Strategists, LLC and The Retail Owners Institute^® have developed these eLearning Kits: self-paced training courses and their companion cause-effect "calculators".

These online tools enable any retailer, anywhere, to produce a fully integrated P&L, inventory buying plan, and resulting cash flow projection. All from the same few inputs. And all without needing a bookkeeper or other help.

When retailers are able to see the financial implications of their management choices, they "Turn on their financial headlights!"

As a result, they can gain control over cash flow, make intelligent inventory purchases, manage their debt, and increase profitability. Knowledge is empowering!

Based on their decades of consulting experience with retailers, the principals of Outcalt & Johnson: Retail Strategists, LLC know that practicing retailers as well as students and newcomers to retailing require the following:

1. Understanding of why financial tools are necessary and how they are critical to the success of their business.
2. Education on the critical financial factors that control retail success: inventory management, gross margin percent, operating expense percent, cash flow, etc.
3. Easy-to-use – but sophisticated! – financial calculators and tools that provide monitoring and modeling of the critical integrated financial factors.
4. Practice in using the financial tools until it is second nature.
5. Easy 24/7 access to the tools, data, on-going education, collaboration, and support of others.

Starting in 1999, Outcalt and Johnson began to develop self-help websites focused exclusively on serving current and prospective independent retailers. These specialized self-help websites provide practical, usable retail financial how-to information, on-demand, 24/7.

• The Retail Owners Institute^® (RetailOwner.com) serving retailers worldwide (18,000+ per month);

• an eLearning Portal to provide financial management training and tools for retailers and those who counsel retailers (RetailOwner.com/elearning)

In 2010, in response to requests from professionals from academia and the business world, they developed this "Learn It & Do It" program for Integrated Retail Financial Projecting, and the unique 3-in-1 INTEGRATED Calculator for Retail Financial Projections.  

Now, for the first time, retail financial modeling is available to all retailers, worldwide, on-demand, 24.7 .

Learn it. Do it. Profit from it.