Your Buying Group Is Changing. Your Strategy Doesn't Have To.
True Value to Do it Best
Transition your pricing deliberately, starting from the pricing you already have
A store changing buying group has a hundred things to deal with, and pricing usually gets handled the fastest way available: put everything on a single suggested retail level and move on.
That is the one decision in the whole transition that quietly costs money every day afterwards. The pricing your store arrived at over years of trading is information — about your market, your customers and which items you cannot move on. There is no reason to throw it away because your warehouse changed.
Your True Value pricing is the starting point
Not the thing you leave behind
1. Capture where you are
Before anything moves, the Store Assessment records your current sitting margin and works out which True Value level your prices actually follow — so you have a baseline to measure against later.
2. See the real cost of each option
Put the Do it Best ladder next to your existing prices and read the consequence of each one: how many price tags change, which direction, and what happens to your sitting margin.
3. Move deliberately
A plan that holds your margin and changes the fewest price tags is usually available. You do not have to accept a blanket re-price to get onto the new catalog.
4. Then build something better
Once you are on the Do it Best catalog, you have more to work with than a level: margin targets, rounding schemes, SKU exceptions, custom groups, and minimum and maximum margins.
The mechanics Margin Master handles for you
- Both sets of item numbers. Before the transition your registers work in True Value item numbers; afterwards in Do it Best SKUs. Margin Master prices correctly either way, and keeps recognizing the leftover True Value numbers that have not turned over yet.
- The item numbers that mean two different things. Thousands of True Value item numbers are also valid Do it Best SKUs — for entirely different items. Margin Master knows the difference and will not price one as the other.
- Your True Value levels, still available. TV Level 1, 1.5 and 2 keep being calculated, so a transitioned store can still price against the program it knows while it decides what to do next.
- Costs from your own RSC. Do it Best cost and availability vary by redistribution center, and every catalog figure Margin Master uses carries yours.
Training Videos
Transitioning from True Value to Do it Best covers what to expect, with a one-page handout. Pricing your Do it Best store on purpose makes the case that one price does not fit every store. Setting up a True Value store and its Store Assessment runs the assessment end to end — the step that tells you what the transition would do to your margin before you commit to it.
Find out what the transition would do to your margin
A Store Assessment answers it from your own items, before you commit to anything — including whether a blanket re-price would have cost you margin you did not need to give up.
