A pre-Christmas sale organized to run all month helped one shop end December with $10,000 in additional sales and far less leftover gift merchandise.
Tired of slashing prices on unsold Christmas merchandise after the holiday, two years ago, Andy Knowles of Rob’s Flowers & Gifts in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, came up with a plan to move more gifts and fresh flowers in the weeks leading up to the big day.
The shop’s “Pre-Christmas Sale” event ran from Thanksgiving week to Christmas Eve and was centered on a series of strategic, targeted discounts, starting with sales on the last of the fall-themed items and ending with specials on Christmas centerpieces and cut flower designs. Each week brought a new deal, and along the way, Knowles highlighted specific items that he knew could use a sales boost.
While running specials leading up to a holiday may seem like old hat, what made the campaign new and different for Knowles was how much thought went into what items to spotlight and when. Rather than taking a helter-skelter approach, he laid out a plan (second week, Christmas ornaments; third week, pre-made artificial wreaths and swags, etc.) and then promoted each deal through social media.
With that consistent approach, “I was able to move holiday product through the whole season,” rather than seeing a rush early in the month, just after Thanksgiving, and then again at the end, when people started thinking about centerpieces, he said.
By the end of December, Knowles said his total sales were up $10,000 for the month and his cut flower and centerpiece sales were up “dramatically” over results from the same time period in 2014. He also entered the New Year with just 10 percent of his holiday merchandise unsold — a major improvement over previous years, when he found himself with up to 40 or even 50 percent of gift items unsold.
“I used that extra cash flow to buy Christmas items for this year, at deep discounts, and because I didn’t have a lot of unsold items, I had room to store those new things,” he said.
