Sometimes smoke shops struggle, even when business is booming and customers love them. Why? Because without a healthy profit margin, it’s hard to achieve long-term success.
Every smoke shop owner wants to boost their profit margins, but it’s not always as easy as it seems.
We’re here to help. This article will provide you with a better understanding of your smoke shop’s profitability. We’ll also highlight the top methods and tools to help bring in more money for your business.
How To Calculate Profit Margin
Profit margin looks at how much you earn from sales. Put simply, it’s looking at what money you get to take home after buying and selling your products.
PROFIT MARGIN = [ (Net sales - Cost of goods) / Net Sales ] x 100
Profit margins can be viewed as a whole or for individual items. The profitability of your smoke shop depends on various factors, and the average profit margin can range from 20 to 80%.
Why Understanding Smoke Shop Profit Margins Is Important
While it might seem intimidating and time-consuming to dive into the sales numbers, getting a handle on your smoke shop profit margins can help you:
- Improve your pricing strategy: You can set prices that are both competitive and profitable. You can also identify areas where you may be undervaluing your products or services.
- Make smarter business decisions: Knowing exactly how your business is making money (or where it’s falling short) gives you insights to make smarter decisions about inventory management, staffing, expansion, and more.
- Understand your business’ health: Without a view of profit margins, it’s hard to understand whether your business is financially healthy. When you know how healthy your business is, you can effectively cut costs and find growth opportunities.
With a solid understanding of smoke shop profit margins, you’ll be better equipped to expand your business with confidence.
6 Ways To Improve Smoke Shop Profit Margins
If you ignore your profit margins, you’re leaving money on the table. But by using the right tools and following these best practices, you can maximize your profits and deliver better customer experiences.
1. Leverage Technology and Sales Reporting
Modern point of sale (POS) systems do more than process transactions. They track all of your sales and inventory, allowing you to create custom reports that help you maximize profits. By leveraging the right POS software, you can gain actionable insights into things like:
- Top sellers: Find out what your top-selling items and product categories are to understand what’s popular (and what’s not) in your smoke shop.
- Cost of goods sold (COGS): Also known as a “cost of sales” report, a COGS report shows you how much it costs to produce the goods and services you provide.
- Shrinkage causes: Identify patterns that suggest theft or accidental shrinkage to take proactive measures.
- Expense tracking: Understand your overheads by comparing your sales against operating expenses like rent, utilities, and staffing.
- Daily activity reports: See when your peak hours are so you can make sure you’re well-staffed.
Most importantly, a smoke shop POS system lets you make business decisions based on data, not on a hunch.
2. Optimize Inventory Management
Keeping your shelves well stocked with their favorite items is the foundation of happy customers and repeat business. To do that, you need to track your stock effectively. Optimizing your inventory management is a great way to maximize your profits and reduce holding costs.
A POS system with robust inventory tracking will help improve your profit margins by reducing overstock and understock situations. Software that supports carton-pack breaking lets you split packs of cigarettes or cigars, allowing you to accurately track inventory.
Last, use your POS system to set automatic reorder reminders when stock levels on particular items drop below a certain threshold to make sure your most popular items are never out of stock.
3. Negotiate With Suppliers
Regularly negotiating costs with suppliers is an important aspect of boosting your small business’ revenue. However, you can’t just ask for a discount with no information to back up why you deserve one.
Track the profit margins of products from each supplier. This will let you see:
- Which supplier is giving you the best deal
- Which supplier’s products are the most or least popular
- How a particular supplier’s cost of goods compare to your sales numbers
A deep understanding of each supplier and their products gives you a better way to visualize and share revenue numbers, which can be helpful when negotiating. It also lets you understand which relationships are financially beneficial and which aren’t.
You can also use your POS system to find your bestsellers and try to save money by ordering them in bulk.
4. Expand Your Product Offerings
Within the last decade, new products like vapes, kratom, and CBD have upended the smoke shop business. Keeping ahead of emerging trends is an important way to stay relevant and attract a broader customer base.
You might consider offering more high-margin items like accessories and vaping products. Try out different brands and keep track of sales to see which products your customers prefer.
Expanding your services is another area that can bring in extra revenue. Smoke shop services can range from offering curated selections to setting up a cigar lounge. Be creative and tailor your services to your unique clientele.
5. Cut Unnecessary Costs and Underperforming Products
Without a unified view of your sales numbers, expenses, and staffing costs, it’s hard to figure out where to make cuts. Cutting costs randomly isn’t an effective way to reduce your overheads, and you might end up hurting the customer experience in the process.
Instead, use your POS system to find areas to trim down.
- Staffing: Instead of letting staff go, discover when your peak hours are and schedule them more strategically. There’s no point paying for extra staff when your shop is less busy.
- Products: If you find that certain products aren’t selling, discount them to move them off the shelves, then try something else in their place. Don’t take up valuable shelf space with unpopular items.
- Expenses and services: It’s easy to forget about the various services and subscriptions we use. Review what you’re paying for services like internet, phone, website hosting, software licenses, insurance, and more to see if there are opportunities to reduce costs.
- Inventory waste: Make sure you’re not overordering and taking up your storage space with excess stock that may not sell.
6. Upsell Using Bundles and Customer Loyalty
Customer loyalty and discounts are a great way for small businesses to better connect with customers and increase revenue.
Create curated bundles to capture customers’ attention and upsell them on high-end items. Customer loyalty programs that offer points for purchases also help retain customers, which is a huge source of revenue for small businesses.
Related Read: Boost Sales With These 6 Smoke Shop Advertising Tips
Once you have your customers’ information, you can look at their purchase history to offer tailored promotions, like birthday discounts, free items, and more. While discounts might not seem like a great strategy for making more money, they help build positive relationships with customers — and that will pay off in the long run.
Leveraging a Smoke Shop POS System To Maximize Your Profits
Whether you’re starting up a smoke shop or looking to expand, maximizing your profit margins is always a good idea. Remember, the best ways to boost your profitability are:
- Make decisions based on data
- Optimize your inventory
- Negotiate costs with suppliers
- Offer a wider variety of products and services
- Cut unnecessary costs
- Strategically use customer loyalty and discounts
A POS system built for smoke shops makes it easier than ever to improve your profit margins. Cigars POS is built specifically for smoke shops and comes loaded with the analytics and reporting features you need to boost your revenue and improve the customer experience.
Want to learn how to maximize your smoke shop profit margins? Schedule a free demo today.
