Same-Store Sales

Categories: Metrics

Brick and mortar retail stores grew for half a century by buying each other. Not "organically." That is, organic growth would be where one store sold $72,378 last month and then $87,278 this month and hopes to sell $102,982 next month. But if one store bought another and then consolidated their totals, it'd look like "total store sales" doubled, even though each individual store was basically flat on sales. So the same store sales number tries to take away the ambiguity introduced by "growth by acquisition," rather than the old-fashioned way of growing, which is just...growing.

It's an important metric, because it's "pure," in that financial engineering chicanery doesn't play a role in getting to the real health of the business. We'd hope, anyway. And well, yes, in an Amazon world it probably doesn't matter...they're all going to die at some point. Sorry, brick 'n' mortars. Just keepin' it real.



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