Enabling Expansion
The Forzani Group
The Forzani Group (FGL/FGL Sports) was a client of Pulse Retail systems (PRS) from 1983 to 1993. PRS supplied software for accounting, inventory management, inventory performance, and point-of-sale to support FGL’s business and accelerated expansion of over 1000% growth over the ten years.
- Client: The Forzani Group
- Solution:Inventory & POS
- Date:1983 -1993
- Sector:Retail Solutions
About The Forzani Group
Forzani’s Locker Room was started in 1974 by CFL football players John Forzani, Joe Forzani, and Basil Bark to fulfill a need for quality athletic footwear in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. FGL became a publicly-traded company in 1993 after acquiring Sport Chek. FGL acquired National Sports, a long standing clients of PRS, in 2004. Canadian Tire Corporation acquired FGL Sports in 2011 and as of 2021 has over 500 stores across Canada.
The Challenge
PRS was approached by Forzani’s Locker Room in 1983 when they had 6 locations. The lack of a computerized inventory and accounting system was inhibiting their growth. It was an impossible task to monitor sales and inventory activity using pen-and-paper ledgers; yet their concept was ready to grow!
The Solution
PRS supplied software for accounting, inventory management, inventory performance, and point-of-sale to support FGL’s business. This included multiple systems architectures over the course of the 10 years all designed with scalability in mind. The PRS systems provided the infrastructure that enabled the FGL business expansion to include not only additional locations but also additional banners.
Expansion Enabled
The Results
After PRS’s system was installed, the chain expanded to 75 locations within 10 years (over 1000% growth), under 6 separate banners: Forzani’s Locker Room, Sun Sports, Athlete’s Warehouse, RnR The Walking Store, Forzani’s Tech Shop, and Jersey City. Each of the banners catered to a specific market segment based on price point and activity focus. A particular strength of the system was that it allowed reporting by banner, by store, and overall performance. This helped provide management insight as to their growth goals and where their expansion plans should be directed.
Analysis That Previously Took Days Reduced to Minutes
After a specific period of growth, it became apparent that PRS’s focus needed to be on the sales and inventory management side of the business, which meant that another software package that had an accounting focus was to be implemented. PRS aided in the selection, implementation, and native integration to the accounting package.
One of the so-called ‘features’ of the accounting package is that the financial analysis was created using a third-party spreadsheet program (it’s important to understand that this was pre-Excel days!). The spreadsheet integrated to the SQL database to retrieve data in numerous ways. In theory, this would provide a customizable tool that could handle the multi-banner & multi-store reporting, with multiple levels of summary and filtering based on management requirements. The key comparatives that were required were comparisons to last year, comparisons to forecast, same-store-sales, % to sales, summaries by period, by quarter, and YTD. The spreadsheet-based tool was cumbersome to customize, but admittedly the biggest problem was that it required an operator to initiate & then monitor the data-retrieval process for all the reports. This process would take literally days of computer and operator time.
PRS was tapped to see if a solution could be developed. Ultimately, we created a Financial Statement Writer that could be customized and provided all the analysis, comparisons, and summary/detail that was requested.
But the BEST PART was that the program was automated, ran unattended, and automatically distributed the analysis to various individuals in management by email. And the entire process, which previously took days, was whittled down to 6 minutes!
Ultimately, the original accounting vendor saw the value as well and purchased the rights and source code for PRS’s Financial Statement Writer for inclusion in their software. It was a remarkable success.
One of the so-called ‘features’ of the accounting package is that the financial analysis was created using a third-party spreadsheet program (it’s important to understand that this was pre-Excel days!). The spreadsheet integrated to the SQL database to retrieve data in numerous ways. In theory, this would provide a customizable tool that could handle the multi-banner & multi-store reporting, with multiple levels of summary and filtering based on management requirements. The key comparatives that were required were comparisons to last year, comparisons to forecast, same-store-sales, % to sales, summaries by period, by quarter, and YTD. The spreadsheet-based tool was cumbersome to customize, but admittedly the biggest problem was that it required an operator to initiate & then monitor the data-retrieval process for all the reports. This process would take literally days of computer and operator time.
PRS was tapped to see if a solution could be developed. Ultimately, we created a Financial Statement Writer that could be customized and provided all the analysis, comparisons, and summary/detail that was requested.
But the BEST PART was that the program was automated, ran unattended, and automatically distributed the analysis to various individuals in management by email. And the entire process, which previously took days, was whittled down to 6 minutes!
Ultimately, the original accounting vendor saw the value as well and purchased the rights and source code for PRS’s Financial Statement Writer for inclusion in their software. It was a remarkable success.
Catching a Thief
Loss prevention in retail is centered around theft of product, but it also encompasses cash register fraud. At the end of the day, a critical piece of determining if losses have taken place is by doing regular physical counts of inventory in each location.
Forzani’s was experiencing loss and was able to measure it (after starting to use our systems), but it often was unable to identify the source of the loss. After implementing PRS systems, and using the tools native to the solution, loss prevention staff quickly focused their efforts on a single location that was experiencing loss rates that exceeded expectations. What was happening: an employee would open the store (by themselves) and would transact sales, but prior to additional staff or shift change arrival they would run an end-of-day on the manual cash register, re-enter any credit card transactions and POCKET THE CASH.
Forzani’s management knew they had a problem based on physical counts, but it wasn’t until they used PRS's POSability point-of-sale that they could identify that additional end-of-day processes were being done. Once they found that out, it was a simple matter to see who was using the register or had clocked-in … it turned out to be the store manager! He was terminated and charged immediately.
The entire process of settlement, cash reconciliation and sales audit revolutionized this part of the business and eliminated further loss through this strategy.
Forzani’s was experiencing loss and was able to measure it (after starting to use our systems), but it often was unable to identify the source of the loss. After implementing PRS systems, and using the tools native to the solution, loss prevention staff quickly focused their efforts on a single location that was experiencing loss rates that exceeded expectations. What was happening: an employee would open the store (by themselves) and would transact sales, but prior to additional staff or shift change arrival they would run an end-of-day on the manual cash register, re-enter any credit card transactions and POCKET THE CASH.
Forzani’s management knew they had a problem based on physical counts, but it wasn’t until they used PRS's POSability point-of-sale that they could identify that additional end-of-day processes were being done. Once they found that out, it was a simple matter to see who was using the register or had clocked-in … it turned out to be the store manager! He was terminated and charged immediately.
The entire process of settlement, cash reconciliation and sales audit revolutionized this part of the business and eliminated further loss through this strategy.
Competitive Advantage
It’s always important to consider context, and around the time that Forzani was expanding, few other retailers had systems that could quickly change pricing based on competitive pressures. Even at Forzani’s (with only 6 stores), communication of price changes and re-pricing/re-tagging was cumbersome, error-prone and challenging. When prices weren’t adjusted, the end result was lost sales to competitors.
PRS provided a solution to this problem: a communications environment that communicated price changes and product updates (while sales transactions were retrieved). This environment was automated and initially was nightly via telephone/ modem connections. Subsequent versions of this communications system made these updates available in real-time. It meant that pricing strategies could be implemented at multiple store locations as fast as they were set up at the head office – super-efficient!
PRS enjoyed a close working relationship with management at FGL Sports during those formative years of PRS’s business and during a critical expansion phase at FGL.
PRS provided a solution to this problem: a communications environment that communicated price changes and product updates (while sales transactions were retrieved). This environment was automated and initially was nightly via telephone/ modem connections. Subsequent versions of this communications system made these updates available in real-time. It meant that pricing strategies could be implemented at multiple store locations as fast as they were set up at the head office – super-efficient!
PRS enjoyed a close working relationship with management at FGL Sports during those formative years of PRS’s business and during a critical expansion phase at FGL.
