I’ve been holding onto this story for a long time, but now seems like an appropriate time to tell it as The Colonel recently passed away (see “R.I.P. Louis Zocchi“). Like many industry veterans, I knewThe Colonel for a very longtime. He’d actually call me about once a year (since about 2013) looking for information on older retailers, as he knew I kept old copies of gaming catalogs and magazines in my library. However, nothing will ever top the first time I met The Colonel at GAMA Trade Show in 2006 and learned the ancient wisdom of the Zocchi Retail Inventory system.
GAMA Trade Show 2005 was held at the Riviera in Las Vegas, Nevada, which was imploded and now long gone (see “GAMA Trade Show Report“). The Riviera was a notorious hellhole of a venue for a show, even back then. This fine establishment featured such amenities as cigarette burns on the blackjack tables, the smell of cheap cigars and sweat embedded into the walls, and the stains from tears shed over broken dreams on the carpets. Looking back, this was actually the perfect place to hold GAMA Trade Show during that era, given the state of the GAMA organization at the time.
In 2005, I had actually just opened a game store called Gamecraft, Ltd, and this was one of my first GAMA Trade Shows. After walking the exhibit floor on the first day, I sat down to take break next to an older gentlemen at the round tables outside the hall. I introduced myself to him in an effort to engage in networking (also, just to be nice), and he told me that his name was Dave Arneson. Now, being a slinger of cardboard and Clix at the time,I had pretty much zero idea who this guy actually was (see “Dave Arneson“). Believe me when I say that I found out fast when Louis Zocchi also sat down at the same table to engage us in conversation.
Both Dave and Louis sat there with me for a couple hours explaining the games business to me. These two were seemingly never-ending fonts of knowledge when it came to how the games industry had been and what it had become and had lots of advice for me as a new retailer. Arneson’s advice generally revolved around partnerships, which I won’t get too deeply into for a few reasons. Zocchi’s main advice to me was to keep your inventory cycling. Louis then waved his magic wand (very literally) and entrusted me with the ancient wisdom of the Zocchi Retail Inventory System to help me manage my store’s inventory.
The Colonel’s suggested system for managing retail inventory was simple and easy to remember and put into motion. To start the process, he advised that I find myself a bunch of circular stickers that were at least three different colors. In this example, we will go with red, blue, and yellow stickers. When new inventory arrived, he advised that I log the products and mark them with the red stickers; then after 30 days change over to marking products with blue stickers, and after 60 days change over to marking products with yellow stickers.
His system was that when I hit the end of the yellow-sticker cycle (90 days after the first red sticker), I should run a sale offering 10% off all non-evergreen red-stickered items and find a new sticker color to mark new inventory coming in. repeat this process with blue and yellow-stickered inventory as they age to 90 days, and once those 10% off sales are completed, run a sale bumping the red-stickered products up to 20% off. The rest of the system is essentially wash-rinse-repeat using different-colored stickers until inventory cycles itself out of the shop or ends up with a 30% off tag on a clearance table.
While most elements of this system have now been made obsolete through the use of POS systems to track inventory age, the lesson to discount inventory that hasn’t sold after the first 90 days remains a good one. In this era of TCG invoices that “…looked like the tracking number for the shipment” (see “Tariffs and a ‘Final Fantasy’ Weekend“), retailers need to free up every dollar they can by moving old inventory out for cash and tracking inventory age and marking down slow movers is a great way to do that.
I will miss both Dave and Lou very much and feel privileged to have had them as some of my mentors throughout the years. They were definitely some of the bestof the Old Guard and I will remember them always.
Source: ICv2
