The holidays are in full swing, and slowly but surely it will be time to think about those end of year sales to push that extra inventory out the door. So I thought it would be a good idea to address the issue of merchandising a sale table, or shelf, or what have you. Also some creative window displays to advertise your sale. Sales are important to get rid of unwanted or out of date inventory, but you still want it to sell so I think it’s important to take care with how you handle it. Sales often look messy, junky and unwelcoming. In fact I was just in a store were the sale area was so messy it was impossible shop. If you are going to treat merchandise like that, then you might as well throw it away right off the bat. It can and in my opinion does reflect badly on the store.
I also understand that a sale section can’t take up too much space, and new merchandise is priority, but it doesn’t take much to keep it organized, looking nice, and shop-able. So here are a few things to keep in mind when setting up a sale, and a few ideas for some window displays.
One of the most important things is to make sure that items are priced clearly. The worst thing is having to sell items below what you would like simply because it was not marked clearly. Second keep the sale area organized, and clean, repackage merchandise if necessary. You could even have bins, or baskets reserved just for sale items. That not only helps to keep things organized, but it also makes it clear to the customer that these items are on sale. The better organized you, the easier it is for customers to find things and the more you will sell.
Now, onto some creative window display solutions. Here is an idea from one that I did, that is simple and re-usable. I cut long banners from butcher paper that fit the length of my windows. Then I typed words into the computer and printed them out in different sizes and fonts and then pasted them to the paper. I then took large sheets of red paper and cut out “S A L E” and glued a letter to each banner. Then hung the banners in the windows. If you don’t want something so loud and obvious, you could just stick the sale letters directly on the windows, with a nice display in the back ground. Preferably with some of the actual sale merchandise. I like this idea because it takes away the stigma of a sale a bit and shows passersby the merchandise in a more positive light. You can make a more fun sale sign by cutting colorful paper, like scrap-booking paper into pennants and hanging them on a string, then writing or pasting the sale letters onto the pennants. Those types of things are great because again, they can be re-used and can start a tradition for your store. Customers will get to know, that when the pennant banner goes up there is a sale.
Lastly, something that I always do, which helps me a lot when trying to decide what to do is to ask myself questions, and to put myself in the shoes of a customer. Would I like to shop this sale? Would this window display entice me to walk into this shop?
So, I hope this helps you to sell off some that the old merchandise and create a fresh start into the New Year.
