Footwear is the retail category where service and stock are the same act: the customer sees a display pair, asks for a size, and someone goes to find it. Whether it is there, in that size and that width, in a box that is fit to sell, decides the sale in the minute the customer is waiting. The store's economics are set by size runs, by the fill-in reorder that keeps the popular sizes in stock, and by what happens to the pairs and boxes that pass through the fitting bench every day. With Pentoggle, a footwear retailer can describe how their stock and their floor actually work and generate the starting application around it.
This page is for the shoe store, whether independent, multi-brand or own-brand. The clothing matrix, alterations and apparel returns are Apparel Retail Software. The season-and-brand business of buying, full-price weeks and markdown is Fashion Retail Software, and a fashion footwear store is that page and this one together. Sports and performance footwear alongside equipment is Sporting Goods Retail Software.
Most footwear stores already run an accounting system such as QuickBooks, Tally or Xero, a POS, and the ordering methods each brand uses. Those stay where they are. What is often still managed outside them is the stockroom: which sizes and widths are actually on the shelf, which box has a pair that has been tried by twenty people, which style is missing its best sizes, and what came back last week in a box that cannot go back on the shelf.
Key takeaways
- The stock unit is the pair at a size and a width. A style with plenty of stock and no pairs in the sizes that sell is out of stock for most of the customers who ask.
- The size run is the buying decision and the fill-in is the replenishment decision. A style bought in a run that suits this store, and topped up in the sizes that go first, stays sellable through its life.
- The box is part of what is sold. A pair in a damaged or wrong box sells at a discount or not at all, and the box's condition has to be a state on the pair.
- Service happens from the stockroom, in the minute the customer is waiting, so the lookup and the pick have to work on a phone at the bench.
- A useful number is the share of styles with a broken size run, read alongside the fill rate on requested sizes.
How a footwear store makes money
A shoe store earns on the pair, and the pair the customer wants is one cell of a style's size-and-width run. The margin on a pair sold at full price is set once; whether that margin is realised depends on the store having the size when it is asked for, on the pair and its box being fit to sell, and on how many pairs of the style are left when it is discontinued or marked down.
Size runs are where the buy is decided. A style is bought as a run: a quantity in each size, and where the store carries them, each width. A run that reflects how this store's customers are actually built sells through evenly. A standard run, or the brand's default, sells out in the middle sizes early and leaves the ends, and the ends are marked down.
Fill-in ordering is where the season is kept alive. A style selling well loses its best sizes first. If those sizes are reordered while the style is current, the wall keeps selling; if they are not, the style looks tired while the stockroom holds pairs nobody asked for. Brands vary in whether and how quickly they can supply fill-ins, and that varies by brand and by season.
Service is where full-price sales are made. A customer who is fitted well, offered the right width, and shown a second style in the size that fits is a customer who buys at full price and comes back. That service depends on the person at the bench knowing, in seconds, what is in the stockroom.
The cost rhythm that runs against it
Stock arrives as runs, in boxes, and every box has to be checked, labelled and shelved in a stockroom organised by style and size so it can be found in a hurry. The stockroom is the store's working capital in physical form: hundreds or thousands of boxes, each worth the pair inside, each findable only if it is where the record says.
Pairs move constantly between the stockroom and the floor. A customer tries three pairs and buys one; the other two go back, or should. Boxes are damaged by handling. Pairs are separated, one shoe in one box and its partner elsewhere, and a single is worth nothing until it is reunited. Display pairs on the wall age in the light and are eventually sold as seconds or written off.
Returns come back in boxes that have been opened, sometimes with the pair worn once, sometimes with the wrong pair inside. The box's state decides whether the pair goes back on the shelf at full price, into clearance, or into a claim with the brand.
Labour peaks at weekends and around season changes, and fitting is time. A store that staffs to transactions per hour will be short on the Saturday afternoon when every customer needs a size found.
Set against a margin realised pair by pair, this rhythm means the stockroom record has to be right at the pair, the fill-in has to be a routine rather than a memory, the box has to be a state, and the person at the bench has to be able to answer "do you have this in a nine" without walking to the back.
Where the record usually breaks
A footwear store's POS records the pair sold. The breaks are in the stockroom and in the box.
When the record is by style
The system shows thirty pairs of a style. The stockroom has four in a seven, eleven in a twelve, and none in the sizes anyone asks for. The style is reordered as a style, or not at all.
When the fill-in is a memory
The manager knows the nines and tens are gone. The brand's order window was last week. The style sells through its remaining sizes at markdown, and the sizes that would have sold at full price were never reordered.
When the box is not a state
A pair has been tried by many customers. The box is torn, the tissue is gone, the pair is fine. It sits in the stockroom at full price, is offered to a customer who declines it because of the box, and is eventually found at the count and marked down.
When singles accumulate
A left shoe in one box, its partner in another after a busy afternoon. Neither is sellable. The count finds the pair, or finds two singles, and the style has been out of that size for a month while it was in the building.
What footwear retail software holds
Styles as size-and-width runs
Every style with its sizes and, where carried, widths, stock per pair per location, and the style total as a sum, so a sale, a count or a reorder happens at the pair.
Stockroom locations
Where each style and size sits, so the person at the bench can look up and go, and a pair returned to the wrong place is found at the next count.
Size runs and fill-ins
The run bought per style, the sizes selling out, and fill-in suggestions by brand and order window, so the popular sizes are reordered while the style is current.
The box as a state
Box condition held with the pair: new, opened, damaged, wrong box, so the price and the shelf the pair can go to are known.
Bench lookup and pick
Stock by size and width for the style in front of the customer, on a phone, with a pick from the stockroom recorded so the floor knows what is out.
Singles, mismatches and display pairs
Singles recorded until reunited, mismatched boxes flagged at count or return, and display pairs tracked from the wall to seconds or write-off.
Returns with the box
Returns linked to the original sale with the pair's and the box's condition, and the destination decided by both: back to shelf, clearance, brand claim or write-off.
The buyer's view
Broken runs by style and value, fill rate on requested sizes, run bought against run sold by style, and returns by reason, on a phone.
Workflows this business depends on
- Retail Inventory Management Software, because the stock unit is the pair at a size and width, and the box's condition is a state on it.
- Retail Warehouse Management Software, because the stockroom is the shop, hundreds of boxes need addresses, and a pair put back in the wrong place is a pair the store cannot sell.
- Retail Replenishment Software, because the fill-in on the sizes that sell out is the replenishment decision, and it has to be a routine against each brand's order window.
- Retail Barcode and Label Software, because every pair needs a code at its size and width, and the box label is what the person at the bench reads.
- Retail Returns Management Software, because a return is a pair and a box, and the box decides whether it can go back at full price.
- Retail Inventory Audit Software, because singles, mismatches and mis-shelved pairs are found by counting at the pair, and a stockroom counted by style hides all three.
- Retail Multi-Store Inventory Software, because a single pair in the right size at another branch is often the whole sale, and the bench needs to see it.
- Retail Inventory Forecasting Software, because the buy is a run, the run comes from what this store sold by size, and a standard run is where broken runs begin.
Why footwear retailers choose Pentoggle
Pairs, not styles
Stock at the size and width, so the store knows it is out of the nine before the tenth customer asks.
The stockroom on a phone at the bench
Lookup, pick and location for the style in front of the customer, in the minute they are waiting.
Fill-ins as a routine
The sizes selling out surfaced against each brand's order window, so the style keeps its best sizes through its life.
The box as part of the pair
Condition held with the pair, so a torn box is priced and shelved accordingly rather than discovered at the count.
Sits around your accounting, your POS and your brands
QuickBooks, Tally, Xero and comparable systems continue handling the books. Your POS continues at the counter. Brands continue taking orders their way. Pentoggle holds the stockroom between them.
A useful number for a footwear store
The share of styles with a broken size run, read alongside the fill rate on requested sizes.
The first is the state of the wall. A style missing its best sizes is not selling as a style, and the share of the range in that condition is the share that is underperforming while it looks fully stocked.
The second is the customer's experience. How often the size and width the customer asked for was in the stockroom, which requires recording the request and not only the sale. A style with a low fill rate on requests is one to fill in, transfer or accept as done.
Read run bought against run sold beneath both, per style, at the end of each season. It is the input that most improves the next buy, and it is only available if the record was at the pair all season.
Ready to build footwear retail software?
You know what styles are on the wall.
You may not be able to say which of them are missing their best sizes, how many singles are in the stockroom, or how many pairs sit in boxes that will not sell at full price.
Describe your styles, your stockroom and how a customer is fitted in your store to Pentoggle in plain English and generate a working first version in hours, then refine it around your process.