Despite being such a powerful tool that can eliminate guesswork, data often finds itself in a position of being controversial or a hot-button topic.

Look no further than the sport of baseball to understand what I’m talking about. At its core, baseball is a very simple game. Throw the ball. Hit the ball. Catch the ball. However, over the past two decades, data has fully taken over and turned it into a numbers-driven sport. Front offices across Major League Baseball have brought on teams of data scientists who, today, carry the same level of influence as scouts and assistant coaches. (If you’ve never seen or read Moneyball, it’s a great story that dives deep into the early days of this trend.)

Players on the field are repositioned ever-soslightly based on what the data says about a batter’s tendencies so that they might have a better chance of getting to a ball put in play. Hitters’ swings have evolved over time as we’ve learned about things like launch angle and strike zone coverage.

Purists would tell you they hate what data has done to the sport, especially at the lower levels of baseball where scouts play an integral role in predicting a player’s future potential. Data takes away from those “gut feelings” about a player. It negates the “eye test” that so many scouts seemed to rely on.

But, at the end of the day, data has made those scouts’ jobs easier. It provides more information about endless aspects of a player’s performance, allowing coaches and general managers to ultimately decide how much (or if) the team is willing to invest in that player’s future with the franchise.

LISTEN: Ep. 223: King’s Great Buys Plus Podcast

Now, take ‘player’ and swap it for ‘product.’ Data, as it relates to the retail world, can be leveraged in so many ways to help a growing Independent retail business make decisions around what product to carry, how to merchandise their sales floor, where there might be opportunities for growth – the list goes on.

Retail buyers and merchants today can rely less on their gut and instead turn to data and see what SKUs are performing best or identify gaps in their assortment.

It’s having that trust in the numbers that has allowed Evansville, Indiana-based King’s Great Buys Plus to thrive in today’s retail environment.

King’s started as a one-store location in 1983 when a young, second-generation retailer and recent college graduate decided to open a store in his vision. Terry Oates’ set out to create an experience for customers in his community that was unlike what they’d come to expect from the big guys around the corner. He wanted his shoppers to have a place where they could go for their top-of-theline electronics and home appliances at low costs and without having to worry about sacrificing the personal touch and customer service.

Shortly after, in 1986, the Great Buys Plus Corporation was founded in order to expand the company by creating partnerships with other likeminded retailers.

“You’re only as big as your business. And having the opportunity to band together, much like Nationwide, and aggregate and scale it to better every business involved is such an incredible opportunity,” Mike Manthey, retail evangelist for King’s, said in a recent Independent Thinking Podcast. “I like to say that we stand on one another’s shoulder to tell a bigger story. It gets us a better seat at the table. While we all can make a decision that’s best for our business, nine times out of 10 we’re walking in the same direction. So, that’s when it really starts getting fun and it’s just an awesome opportunity inside the independent channel of having what we have.”

Today, King’s has ballooned to seven locations across three states, while the Great Buys Plus portfolio of partners continues to grow with 44 affiliated locations.

“Terry’s been doing this almost 50 years, but these businesses have been doing business for almost as long as I’ve had my feet on this ground,” says Manthey. “So, it’s just a phenomenal network, having a group within a group, where we can just talk as one. If we have a problem, there are many others that have probably done it or who are in a similar situation that can help improve the King’s business or the Great Buys Plus business. All the ships rise.”

DETAILS IN THE DATA

A conversation around data with Manthey is about as natural as remembering to breathe. He lives in the numbers – and it also doesn’t hurt that he actually did spend time serving the Independent retail channel as a part of the NMG team, imploring retailers to leverage data.

“When I first got to Nationwide, I guess I forgot how much is on the shelf when it comes to resources,” he says. “Whether it’s resident experts or product on the shelf or a simple, ‘Hey, I need help here,’ I couldn’t have prepped a better way to get back into retail than with my time with Nationwide.”

During his nearly six years on the team – which truthfully is just a blip on the radar is his retailcentric career – Manthey became fully ingrained with Nationwide’s exclusive PriMetrix platform, helping other retailers find ways to leverage the deep insights to improve their operations. Today, he’s using that same platform to help educate himself on the King’s and Great Buys Plus business and build a plan for how to take that next step forward in their growth journey.

“It’s really simple: Where else am I going to get this data,” Manthey says. “I don’t want the vendor data, because they got the national data, and that’s no help to me. Take PriMetrix Market that taught a Chicago guy all about retail in South Dakota when I went to help a new partner there. I would a thousand percent have guessed wrong when I went and worked with our partners in that territory. Same thing here at King’s. I have a vendor that wants to go see a Great Buys partner and wants to understand their community. Well, I can do that. We don’t have to call somebody or guess. I can turn to the data, I can turn to PriMetrix and help our vendor help a Great Buys partner.”

Data can take the guesswork out of your job and help you not only make faster decisions, but decisions that are more informed and have a higher chance of leading you down a winning path.

“If I remember right, Mr. Hickman used to have a sign over his door that read something like, ‘Unless you come with data, it’s just an opinion,’” says Manthey. “Sometimes opinion or your gut will contribute to a successful idea. But ultimately, I’m going to err on the side of data. You’ll find a smaller chance for error when you want to use your gut because you did the heavy lifting with data.”

The challenge, Manthey says, comes in understanding how to properly inject data into the processes that you already have in place.

“It really helped the rubber hit the road for me and for many of our partners,” he says. “It’s multifaceted, and the key is don’t get overwhelmed by the data. People often look at it like they’re looking at a Detroit phone book, and they quit before they start. You just have to get into it, and you can only take it so far and then you have to make an action. There’s enough information there to help validate what you’re thinking or help you identify a winning path.”

To that end, he says, Independent business owners would be wise to take manageable steps into their own data journey. Find an area of the business – maybe it’s one particular price band within one specific product category that you’re exploring – and start there.

“When I was flying around in PriMetrix for Nationwide, everybody wanted me to aggregate their data and do an analysis on their business based on where they do business – the Market reports,” explains Manthey. “I did do that when it was requested, and when you put the entire network and then a particular region, there isn’t much difference, not much value there in the data. But how can you leverage it to find those areas of opportunity? What are the top performing models in your area? Are they on your floor or are you missing out there? It’s that level of data and PriMetrix that really can make a difference in your business.”