With over 50,000 different products available and a plethora of national and regional advertising campaigns it can be difficult establishing what products to stock within your pharmacy.

Customers expect to see an appropriate range, well merchandised without being cluttered or overstocked. Many pharmacies fail to stock 'core range' lines and as a result sales and profits are lost whilst dust gathers on products that simply don't sell.

Numark produce a core range which can help you develop and implement stock disciplines within your pharmacy. Core range is simply a comprehensive list of the top selling 2,500 lines within independent pharmacy. The lists are ranked and categorised to help you stock a range that most appropriately meets customer demand. Core range is designed to streamline ranges and help you stock lines which deliver the biggest return, both from a sales and profit perspective. Data is analysed based not only on sales volume but also on profitability.

Having a core range helps to strike a balance between stocking not only top selling lines but also products that offer your customers a choice within any given category. As previously mentioned, pharmacy will always have exclusive products which sell, but how much space do they deserve and do they deliver the best return?

Core range helps you to:

• Make sure your range reflects your pharmacy.
• Identify top sellers by category.
• Improve the layout and look of your pharmacy.
• Declutter and reduce 'dead stock'.
• Increase sales (despite reducing your stock).
• Bring more customers into your pharmacy.
• Boost the overall performance of your retail environment.
• It does the hard work so that you don't have to!

The growing use of EPoS (electronic point of sale) systems is also making life much easier for pharmacy teams to review sales and understand what is selling well in their pharmacies. Reviewing your own sales data gives you a clearer understanding of what customers require from your pharmacy. Remember, it can only report on the items you actually stock, so always use in conjunction with the core range.