Blvck Diamond

Inventory control was at 45%. The salon was dark five days out of seven. I started coming in early and doing the daily top-50 SKU count myself — the one nobody was doing. If it's meant to be sold, it should be on the floor. For the salon, I recruited and hired until it was staffed to stay open. That took 30 days. Over 60 days, inventory control went from 45% to 85%, and the salon went from closed five days a week to open six. During that same 60 days, store profits rose 75%. No new systems. No consultants. Just observation, standards, and follow-through.

Product marked for discard — packaging changes, vendor returns — was disappearing before it ever hit the bin. Well over $1,000 worth. I caught an employee pocketing it. I wrote them up on a final. Theft is theft, even out of the trash. Then I rebuilt the process: every item counted going into the bin, counted again at discard, a manager present, all of it on camera. Loss prevention is accountability. When the count is verified on camera, the opportunity disappears.

Sales were down 25%, but food cost was up 30%. That math doesn't work. I watched and found it: employees weren't ringing out their free meals and drinks. So I stood in line every shift and ordered my own food and drinks through the register, in front of everybody. Then I sat the supervisors down, explained the why, and coached them on coaching in the moment. From that low, sales came back 20%, and food cost fell 25% from its peak. The fix didn't cost a dollar. It cost attention.

Fragrance gift boxes — $150 and up each — were walking out the front door. They were tagged. The tags just didn't work. I picked one up and walked toward the door myself. No alarm. Tried to pull the tag off. Silence. We were handing thieves the product. I audited every security tag in the store, replaced the dead ones, moved the gift boxes where everybody could see them, and coached the supervisors on greeting every customer — an acknowledged customer is a deterred thief. Loss prevention isn't a tag. It's a system. Systems only work if somebody checks them. Nobody had checked. So I did.

Auditing the daily financials, I kept seeing the same thing: $200 missing. Every day. Never less. The cover was refunds on lottery winnings. I pulled the old reports — same pattern. Then I worked the schedule: matched each lottery cash-out to the employee who ran it, matched each refund to the closing supervisor. It wasn't one person stealing. It was four. One cashed out the winnings, and the closing supervisor refunded it at night to cover it up. Five months. $30,000 gone. The reports always told the truth. Somebody just had to read them.