Alyson MacMullan, of Peak Retail Group, will be writing an 8-part series of holiday tips to help retail businesses meet their sales goals. Alyson’s’ expertise lies in inventory planning and management, sales forecasting and cash flow management which are the building blocks of a successful retail business.
Holiday Tip #1
People have already started holiday shopping. The time to start thinking about your strategy is NOW.
This will be the first installment in a series of holiday tips and tricks to maximize your sales.
Step 1 in the process is to think about:
1. Best and worst selling items from last year – rely on quantitative data!
– You’ve likely already placed purchase orders for the holiday time period, but is there anything that worked well you could buy into to round out the assortment?
2. Marketing tactics from last year that did or did not work and WHY
– It’s OK if a strategy didn’t work but you need to understand WHY and make necessary adjustments
– Go back through the year and think about effective messaging that could be tweaked for the holiday time period
3. Defining your target audience and how it might differ from other times of the year
– Is this a time when women are out shopping for men? Or grandparents are shopping for grandchildren? Or teenagers are shopping for parents?
– Does the assortment need to differ to support your audience?
4. Leveraging quantitative (history) with qualitative data to make better decisions
– Retail is a blend of art and science and the best store owners validate their instincts with hard data.
