About two weeks ago we launched our new gift shop retail forum, where retailers can chat with one another about issues and challenges. Yesterday a hospital gift manager who is new to the industry posted a great question. She wanted to know if there are any benchmarks for the gift industry.

So I asked my colleague, Susan Noyes (who happens to be a local hospital gift shop manager at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, MA) if she has developed any benchmarks or seen any that are widely used in our industry. I was so impressed with her response, I thought it would be helpful to share with everyone.

Here are the benchmarks (which she calls key performance indicators) that she has established for her store.

Key performance indicators used at South Shore Hospital:

• Actual sales to last year and plan

• Average sale: In my hospital shop, it runs typically around $8.75, as we sell alot of small items, candy, single items, etc. (The benchmark that I currently have set for that shop is $10.50.)

• Customer count: from traffic counters

• Transaction count: retrieved from register tapes

• Conversion rate: should be at least 50%

Susan explained to me that in order to get to this point, she had to establish a base. Then she ordered traffic counters, and started recording customer counts (that's been going on for about a year now).

The traffic counters are set up to enable you to track over a four week period, and then establish your own average based on those four weeks of data.

Does anyone else have other key performance indicators in their store?

Stayed tuned, more products from the Atlanta Gift Show tomorrow!