To lose sales now is a crime against retailing

Until recently, this weekend in fact, I thought I knew a thing or two about the retail industry; what to look for in design, how the flow of a store works, until positioning and key touch points for the consumers.

I also thought that I knew the best time of the week to shop and at which point in the calendar would be the best time to buy a few simple things that I needed.

I naively thought that if I left some chores towards the back-end of Saturday that I was being particularly clever in avoiding the crowds. I also thought that because the annual shopping festival started on the weekend, this would be the perfect time to pick up these things not because I so desperately needed them, but because the shops would be full of stock. How wrong could I be?

My first intended purchase was a pair of jeans. Now, being a fairly normal type of guy, I was after a fairly normal, straightforward pair of jeans, nothing complicated or fancy and with the most standard of standard sizes (32/32). I also knew the colour, and of course the brand.

In the second store I visited I asked the store assistant to call the other three branches (something incidentally that he hadn't offered to do) to see where I could get them, but no store had this size. Impossible, I thought to myself.

However, I moved on and instead decided to pick up a board game that I was intending to take round to a friend's house later on that evening. Without having to mention the name, I can tell you that over 90 million copies worldwide have been sold.

As such, during this time of increased activity in the shops and malls, I thought that this would be an easy purchase, as the shops will have made sure that their shelves will be bulging with stock, so that they could make every sale possible.

Again nothing, I tried four stores of various names and brands, and let's be honest there aren't that many toy stores in Dubai, but all to no avail.

Either there was someone, somewhere conspiring against me, or the retailers aren't being as savvy as they ought to be.

At the risk of sounding like a know-it-all, I simply can't understand what's going on here. The guy in the denim store, said that they hadn't had any for a few weeks and didn't know when they'd be getting any more in, and the toy store shop assistant said that he thought there might be some in the warehouse, and could I come back on Friday as they might have them in by then.

My old merchandise director, used to say that "you can't sell it in the warehouse, get it on the shopfloor," and my experiences are a classic example of this. There is clearly a two-fold downfall in communication going on with these retailers.

Firstly, the shop staff should be chasing the stock that is sitting in the warehouse, clamouring for it in fact, as there can't be an easier time to make some sales than now. While the retailers themselves should be on-the-ball enough to realise that if they can't sell it now, they're never going to sell it, and so the warehouse should be empty; whereas the shopfloor should be groaning under the weight of stock waiting to be sold. These retailers are clearly not geared up to make the most of this opportunity.

I have actually now ordered both items off the internet, not because they're cheaper, but because firstly they have the stock and secondly they're prepared to go the extra mile and pay for my delivery. It also meant that I wouldn't have to tough it out in the malls again on a Saturday night.

The malls in Dubai are vibrant, exciting and crowd pleasing, something that online retailers can never be.

However, the retailers here need to make sure that they don't lose sales unnecessarily, because of the most basic of retailing principles, not having the stock on the shelves, something that the online stores will never suffer from.

- The writer is head of retail services, GRMC Advisory Services.