Footwear Insight

48 • Footwear Insight ~ September/October 2023 footwearinsight.com Business Insight By Alan Miklofsky I am making the assumption that when it comes to certain needs of your company, none of you would dispute the advice to use a CPA to prepare your annual corporate tax return or an attorney to advise you on complex legal matters. By using these professionals for only a few hours a month (or perhaps only quarterly or annually), you are able to afford them and thereby your company benefits by the higher-level skill sets you find in professionals. I believe a case can also be made that you can find similar benefits by using professionals in other areas such as: • Contract Review • Human Resources • Marketing • Merchandising • Occupancy • Sales Management We call the professionals who can help you in those areas "outsourced talent." ese are individuals, sometimes (but not always) independent contractors, who have in-depth knowledge and expertise, and network with others on almost a daily basis. As a result, they understand the issues and can distinguish between the meanings created or differences that may occur as a result of how a sentence is phrased or an errantly placed comma. Let me give you a few examples: Insurance When the pandemic hit and closed down our businesses, many of us retailers attempted to open communications with our business insurance companies for what we believed qualified as business interruption claims. Even our agents felt it made sense. While we had received updates and addendums, we just filed those, not realizing that the insurance companies had added provisions that stated an exception to the provisions in our insurance related to "viruses." ankfully, the U.S. government bailed out most of us, but we still wish we had realized the impact of this exception and shopped for a company which didn't have the same exclusion. Only an advisor with very specific knowledge of business insurance could have advised us correctly. Occupancy Members of the National Shoe Retailers Association remember a gentleman named Ron Wilson (who unfortunately departed this world during Covid). He had represented many retailers' interests in lease negotiation with shopping centers. Ron was what you might call "a bulldog" due to his negotiating style (he would say things to the landlords that we might not be willing to risk), but he had a secret weapon. He employed a contract reviewer who went through the lease with a fine-tooth comb and knew exactly what to delete or try to get deleted. Many retailers felt the fee Ron charged was worth every penny. While simultaneously building up my retail shoe career, I also held a real estate license for 24 years (mostly involving commercial property). I was required to go to 24 hours of continuing education every two years and one of those regular classes included contract law, where the instructor taught us how to fill out the standard Purchase Agreement. Certainly, you might agree that the real estate licensees in those classes were more qualified to understand what could go wrong than the typical buyer. So, what I am saying is that there are people outside your business who have specific skill sets and come with expertise in the finer details of contracts. You can't possibly afford to employ all the individuals directly on your team who can do everything you might need in your business, but… you can outsource the talent. Retail Other examples for how extra talent can assist in retail shoe stores: Contracts: such as service agreements, including communications and trash collection. ere are people in the community that know the ins and outs of these contracts. Human Resources: such as policy manuals, For more information on Alan, visit his LinkedIn page at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanmiklofsky OUTSOURCING THE EXTRA TALENT YOU NEED

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