Only industry, which is evergreen, full of surprises, sells life style products, sells fashion, covers the necessity, covers the body, and makes us feel pricy and elegant. Nevertheless demand may drifts away for a certain period, however cannot desist the basic need. Trust me; in fact, there is no substitute for this industry. Nothing can be in future as well.

Recession, which always shake the whole world every 1-2 years. It throttles the global economies and commerce; left us with unemployment, layoffs, sinking household budgets, mergers, accusations, complete sink off the corporations previously world-renowned financial pillars, complete closure of healthy organization and sometimes due to international political pressure go for expropriation and nationalizations.

Although recession is a national and international issue. Its extent is so severe and penetrates so deeply, even the biggest organizations fold their hands and bend to pray for their survival. It is tyrant and merciless like mythological monster, who stems you out from your very base. However, every lock has a key, every problem come up with a solution. Every D-day has a day of re birth.

Here also rays of hope are very much present, its just we need to open up the eyes to look for the right step and fight off with the situation.

Let us discuss:

First, we need to know our own strengths and weakness, need to ask certain questions are very base of industry concerned.

• What will be worst hit department of the organization?
• How is sales growth?
• Which dept. is underutilized and team members?
• Which dept is overburden with loads of extra work?
• What are the complaints of buyers and suppliers?
• What are payment terms?
• What is the normal lead-time of product process?
• What is not attracting to customers?
• What are our bonus and incentive plans?

Let us discuss the important one.

• Worst hit dept can be retail sales/marketing/merchandising/production dept. other dept. like quality/technical/shipping/documentation is co-related; they all rely on actions and reactions of above-mentioned dept. So put extra emphasis on retailing, marketing and production dept, to grab the orders doing aggressive marketing, full and timely utilizations of resources available for production. Positive approach, customer service, employees appreciation and encouragement, monthly feedbacks and reviews of their performance.
• Customers are the first and imperative priority of Business, Hence Use the bench marking, concentration to strengthen the customers service dept., timely deliveries and prompt action on placed orders, after sales comments from buyers/customers. Keep on tracking the market scenario in the sense of quality, designs, trends, customer standards, and most important prices. They will help to gain ground for the existing customers.
• Likewise, suppliers are also important; an organization needs to have easy terms and conditions of payment and timeliness of execution of orders and payment. Loyalty to suppliers shall get you more negotiation grounds and creditworthiness.
• Underutilize department should be dedicated to other departments responsible for productivity and marketing to release their overload. Layoffs, closing the departments, salary cuts and dry incentives shall de-motivate the employees and market positioning of an organization. Unless it is necessary, avoid applying this resort. Holding them for sometime is the best idea to grip the employees.
• Start negotiating for prices and deliveries with suppliers, buyers and consumers, Control internal expenses.
• Stop doing overtime with employees incase of regular orders, Reason being, overtime shall end up with higher wages, electricity and fatigue expenses.
• Retail customers always look for prices in the time of recession; they prefer to hang on with superior quality with lower prices, other wise they will switch to your alternate retailer. Mind it, alternatives are always available.
• Have a sufficient stock of daily necessities as per their specialty.