Hire Data Analyst for Retail Shops
Senior, direct, no layers

A shop's till knows what sold. It rarely knows what should have sold, what was never on the shelf to sell, or what sold only because it was marked down so far that the sale lost money. Those three gaps are where retail margin quietly disappears: stockouts that look like weak demand, clearance that looks like strong sales, and a bestseller list that rewards whatever was discounted hardest.

The analysis joins till sales to stock movements, supplier invoices and markdown records, so each product can be judged on three things at once: how fast it sells, what it keeps after markdowns and supplier terms, and how often it was unavailable when a customer wanted it. A product that sells fast because it is always discounted is a different product from one that sells fast at full price, and the report treats them differently.

Out of that joined view come the decisions a shop owner actually makes: what to reorder, what to stop carrying, when to mark down and by how much, and which suppliers earn more shelf space. Book a free discovery call to see whether your till and stock records can support that view before committing to a scope.

Shops usually run a till or point-of-sale system, a stock spreadsheet or back-office system, and supplier invoices that may arrive on paper or by email. The engagement works from exports of those sources, and where a stock count exists, it is used as a check: the stock the system thinks is on the shelf is compared with the stock actually counted, and the gap is reported rather than adjusted away.

Markdown and promotion records deserve special care, because a sale during a promotion is not the same event as a sale at full price. Promotion dates and discount levels are recorded alongside sales so that demand, price and availability can be separated instead of blurred into one sales line.

A shop that completes this work gets a shelf view it can defend: products ranked by margin kept, not just units shifted, with stockout frequency beside each ranking so a weak seller that was never available is not confused with a weak seller nobody wanted. Open-to-buy decisions stop resting on last month's till total and start resting on product-level evidence.

The analysis cannot create demand for a product nobody wants, and it cannot fix supplier terms on its own. It can show which supplier terms are actually being achieved after discounts and returns, which is the evidence a renegotiation needs.