Case Studies

Store: Coates Mitre 10

Coates Mitre 10 Home & Trade is an independent hardware store based in the NSW town of Lithgow. The company is owned and operated by Mike & Lisa Coates with Mike being the fifth generation to be involved in the business since it was founded in 1906.

Mike installed Margin Master five months ago after having heard of massive profit improvements to hardware stores in the United States whilst visiting with a Resurg Group study tour late in 2008.

Mike’s store then became the Resurg pilot installation for Margin Master. Using his extensive experience in the Hardware Industry, Mike divided his product range by the price sensitivity categories of Blind, Non Comparable, Competitive and Sensitive. The initial price strategies that Mike implemented using sophisticated rounding schemes were by department, and as he became more familiar with Margin Master, these were further enhanced down to Fine Line Class. The resulting 8000 price changes were rolled out over an eight week period.

In the first full month since making the price changes, Mike’s business is now enjoying a 5 point margin gain compared to the same month last year. This improvement has been mirrored each month since. Mike attributes his consistent improvement in Gross Profit directly to his implementation of Margin Master.

Travel Dashboard Case Study

Resurg has developed significant expertise in a number of niche markets, including meeting the needs of travel agencies and travel management companies.

As such, we work in close partnership with companies in these industries to develop custom solutions to meet their particular needs. We have designed a host of key performance indicators, or KPIs, specific to each industry. We appreciate and understand the key variables that drive performance in these markets and have incorporated industry-specific metrics into our custom business intelligence solution offerings.

For the travel industry measuring and monitoring sales of preferred products to meet volume targets is critical.  Resurg analyses a continuous data flow from multiple sources in varied formats, providing companies and business owners with a tool to quickly understand where to direct new business.

Performance Group Case Study - Industry: Supermarkets

Through becoming a member of a performance group program the business proprietor made savings of $45,000 per annum from the first meeting alone. He was able to identify through the following steps.

Step 1: By reviewing the store benchmarks with the other group members the financial results showed that as a multi site business owner they were spending far more than the average on consumables such as plastic bags and produce wrap.

Step 2: The group discussed how to reduce costs in this area. They agreed that the biggest expense was plastic grocery bags. Further research showed that this business was paying 2.4c per grocery bag, other members in the performance group were paying 1.6 cents per bag.

Step 3: The business owners set a goal to change the supplier of grocery bags and estimated that he would save $45,000 in the first year after implementing this change.This was just one improvement from one item which highlights the enormous potential for businesses who are part of this program.