Two denominators, and people quote whichever flatters
Divide the takings by the leased area and you get one number. Divide by the selling floor you actually measured and you get a bigger one. At the defaults it is $210 against $305 per square foot a year, a difference of nearly half, and both are correct — they answer different questions. The leased figure is what the rent is charged against and what a landlord means. The selling figure is what your merchandising decisions can move.
Because the gap between them is the size of your back of house, the selling-floor figure quietly rewards you for shrinking the stockroom. That is worth knowing before you use it to judge whether the shop is working, and it is a good argument for tracking both.
The internal comparison is the only honest one
This page publishes no benchmark and will not, because the published averages that circulate are not comparable to anything specific. They mix a jeweller with a garden centre, a mall unit with a high-street one, and a business with 30 percent gross margin with one running at 60. A figure that is excellent for one format is a failing figure for another, and the difference between two shops selling the same thing on the same street is dominated by the lease.
What does work is comparing the shop against itself. This period against the last one, on the same measured floor. And more usefully, this category against that one, which is what the space-to-sales index does.
The space-to-sales index
Take each category's share of the selling floor and each category's share of the takings, and divide the second by the first. Above 1.00 the category is earning more than its floor share; below 1.00 it is earning less. The set always averages to 1.00 because it is shares against shares, so there is no external number to get wrong — the comparison is entirely internal and entirely yours.
In the default figures, footwear runs at about 1.48 on 16 percent of the floor, while homeware and gifts both sit near 0.55. That is not automatically a verdict on homeware. A category can carry a low index and still deserve its space: it may be what brings people through the door, it may be the reason the rest of the range reads as a shop rather than a rail, and it may sit in floor that nothing else could use. The index tells you where to point the question, not what the answer is.
The trap to avoid is running the index once and reallocating floor to whatever scored highest. Space does not transfer at constant productivity. Doubling the footwear block does not double footwear takings, because the second half of that block is the stock that did not sell in the first half. Move floor in small increments and re-measure, or you will convert a high index into an average one and wonder where it went.
Per linear foot is often the better division
Square feet are how leases are written but they are not how merchandise is bought. A range takes a stretch of fixture, and the honest question is what that stretch earns. The per-linear-foot figure on this page is the same takings divided by the fixture face instead of the floor, and it is the number a range decision is actually made against — a range that needs 40 feet of face has to beat what those 40 feet currently return, and the floor underneath is the same either way.
The face figure comes from the store fixture run layout calculator if you have not measured it, and the shelf facings calculator turns a stretch of face into the actual unit count it holds.
What this page deliberately leaves out
Payroll, utilities, everything below occupancy. The last line here is gross profit less rent, and it is a long way from a profit figure. The reason to stop there is that occupancy is the one cost that attaches cleanly to floor area, so it belongs in a per-square-foot page in a way that payroll does not. For the full picture, break-even sales takes fixed costs against contribution, the labor cost percentage calculator handles the schedule, and margin and price changes cover the other side of the gross margin input.
It also uses one blended margin for every category, which is wrong for at least one of them in any real shop. If your category margins differ by more than a few points, the left-over column is indicative and no more.
Questions people ask
What is a good sales per square foot figure?
There is no figure this page will give you, and the ones that circulate are worth less than they look. Published averages mix formats with nothing in common — a jeweller and a garden centre, a mall unit and a high-street one — and the same takings per foot can be comfortable at 55 percent margin and impossible at 25. The comparisons that carry information are internal: this quarter against last on the same measured floor, and one category against another inside your own shop.
Should I use the leased area or the selling floor?
Both, for different purposes. Leased area is what the rent is charged on, so it is the right denominator when you are asking whether the site works. Selling floor is what merchandising decisions can actually move, so it is the right one for judging the shop plan. Keep in mind that the selling-floor figure improves automatically when the stockroom shrinks, which makes it a poor single measure and a good one alongside the other.
How do I work out the space-to-sales index?
Each category's share of the selling floor, and each category's share of the takings, then sales share divided by space share. Above 1.00 means the category is taking more of the money than it takes of the floor. The property that makes it useful is that the whole set averages to 1.00 by construction, so it needs no external benchmark and cannot be wrong about somebody else's shop. It needs your floor measured category by category, which is the part most people skip.
Does a low index mean I should cut the category?
Not on its own. A category can earn less than its floor share and still be the reason people come in, or the reason the range reads as a coherent shop, or the only thing that will go in an awkward corner. The index points at where to ask the question. It also does not survive a big reallocation: space does not move at constant productivity, and doubling the block of your best-indexing category will not double its takings, because the extra half of the block is the stock that was not selling.
Why does the occupancy split charge the stockroom rent to selling categories?
Because the non-selling floor has no takings of its own to carry it. The stockroom, the office and the aisles exist so that the selling floor can work, so the whole occupancy cost is spread across the categories by their floor share, with the last line taking the remainder so the parts add back exactly to what you entered. It makes the left-over column harsher than a per-category profit and loss would be, and that is the honest direction to be wrong in.