The campus store business is changing. The Follett leaders from 10 years ago would have been hard-pressed to find ways to keep up and evolve.
We needed new leadership.
Unfortunately the leaders we got came from a brain-dead organization called Sears Holding. It's a company devoid of focus, leadership, and innovation. What did the board of directors think they were getting with a Kmart pedigree?
No, actually profit is sales price minus costs. Inflating resale prices does increase profitability. For real.
However, your point is otherwise well taken. If you're hemorrhaging money in other parts of the operations, raising prices on clothing will achieve nothing more than a sugar high. You're not building business, you're giving customers a reason to shop your prices (hey, that was the text book model, wasn't it?).
Captive markets are a thing of the past. follett has to compete nationally. It can't. It's a poorly run company. Employees aren't given the tools to win. Employees are blamed for failing to win. follett is a terrible company. Raising the prices of t-shirts won't change that.
When you raise the price of clothing it falsifies your profitability. It’s similar to what they did with Enron. They inflate the prices so that the margins look better. The most important thing really is the turn. If they bought product differently and excluded spring they would not have the problems that they’re having with constant markdowns for items not selling. They have way too many products that are not what customers want .
And we just got pages & pages of clothing price increases because, why not..!?!
We could use a blue light special to get rid of the overpriced clothing in our store.