Retail Staff Development Tip
Tip #373 - Go for Grab Bags
Dear Tip of the Weeker,
You know, a little bit of imagination can take you a long way. Re-imagining, re-inventing an idea to make it your own is what having your own business is all about. It's one of the reasons we really liked this Tip sent in by a reader last week...
Sidewalk sales are coming up this month for many of you and we thought this idea from Shari Aussant could easily be transplanted from her local fair to your sidewalk. It's a fun, imaginative way to create excitement, increase sales, get rid of excess inventory, and boost the number of transactions per customer.
"Hi Bob -
Your Tip of the Week re: using gift certs to increase traffic in the shop was fantastic! Our shop sponsored a table at a local fair and we were fresh out of ideas of what to do to create excitement. The night before I re-read your email and listened again to the pod-cast and here is what we came up with;
We filled 500 grab bags with product that wasn't moving. Candles that were not the best, free samples given to us by our companies, hot chocolate packets, teas, all little items that we had sitting around. For $1.00 customers could pick a gift bag and in 50 of the bags we hid plastic gift cards with random amounts ranging from $1 to $10 with one $50. We also filled a retro bubble gum machine with fun prizes and free samples for 50 cents a chance to win a $25 gift card.
The bubble gum machine brought in $325 and the Grab Bags brought in over $500. We made our cost back of all the items given away, covered the cost of the table, staff, and gift cards. We passed out hundreds of little $5 gift certs as well and the store which had a history of being quiet on festival days, ended up having a banner day with all the new customers that were coming in with the gift cards and mystery gift certificates. The winners had to physically bring in the card for us to run it on the machine to see what dollar amount they won! It was so fun and our table was the busiest one at the fair. People were jumping when they got a card in their bag as well as with all the freebies they got.
Thanks so much for all of your great ideas, we are having such fun with your e-blasts!"
- Shari Aussant www.oldcompanystore.com
Check us out on Facebook, All the Cool Kids are doing it!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wareham-MA/The-Old-Company-Store/63484356457
That's a lot of GO for a little grab bag!
