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Wow Your Customers with These Stocking Stuffers
Boost your holiday sales with stocking stuffers your customers can’t resist.
Photo Credit: Groom’s Advice
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Author: Cassie Gasaway
We know what you’re thinking: “Anything small can be a stocking stuffer.”
True enough, but selling more small items requires creative sales and merchandising strategies.
Selling stocking stuffers helps clear your shelves of overstocked inventory before hunting season ends. Sure, you can arrange small items under a sign that simply says, “Stocking Stuffers,” but you can wow your customers and boost your sales with just a little extra work.
Shoppers like convenience, but Christmas shopping can be stressful. Therefore, ease their burden by eliminating the guesswork. The strategies below can excite shoppers, and help them have fun through easy, pain-free spending.
Sell pre-bundled stockings already filled with products. Photo Credit: Davis Enterprise
Strategy 1: Sell Bundled Stuffers
Bundling makes buying easier. Create and sell themed stuffer bundles with multiple items. Bundles attract customers who don’t know what to buy. Bundles also increase the items’ perceived value, which makes the bargain even more attractive.
Consider these themes and product suggestions to get started:
- Repair items: Bundle bow wax, fletching glue, Allen wrenches, and other repair items. Bowhunters might also like a bundle of broadheads, bow hangers, and lighted or replacement nocks.
- For tournament archers: Bundle an armguard, chest protector, and a release or finger sling.
- For the home: Feature archery or hunting decorations and knickknacks like Christmas ornaments, window decals, coffee mugs, photo frames, and deer-themed key holders.
- For hunting clothes: Bundle items that help bowhunters clean, organize, and keep their hunting clothes scent-free. This could include scent wafers, laundry detergents, storage bags, and small bottles of scent-killing sprays.
- For comfort and cleanliness: Bundle scent-free deodorant, shampoo, conditioners, body wash, face wipes, and face paint or a facemask. You could also include a hat, hand-warmers, and socks or gloves.
- For the woods: Bundle handy items for the woods or treestand, such as a saw or compass, or reflector tacks, portable charger, backup flashlight, flagging ribbon, pruning shears, grunt calls, hand-warmers, first-aid kits, screw-in steps, and wind-checking powder.
- After the kill: Bundle gloves, knife, deer-rectum tool, freezer-safe storage bags, and other butchering and meat-storage tools.
- For the table: Bundle a cookbook, meat spices, food thermometer, marinade ingredients, and sausage-making kits.
Create bins of different categories and values so that shoppers can mix and match items and create their own stocking bundle. Photo Credit: Archery Connection
Strategy 2: “Create Your Own” Stocking-Stuffers
Place similar-priced products in bins and let customers pick three, four or five items to create their own bundle. Include items for all ages and skills at different price points. Bundles can range from $15 to $50, or whatever range you choose, depending on which products you make available.
How does that work? Consider creating four bins. One bin has items $5 or less, like spices, a whistle, bow wax, deodorant, bow hangers, hand warmers, flagging ribbon, and screw-in steps. A second bin with $10 items could include calls, socks, shampoo, body wash, pruning shears, and coffee mugs. A third bin with $15 items could include knives, compasses, flashlights and face masks. And a fourth with $20 items could include broadheads, SD cards, first-aid kits, and hats and shirts.
Customers who have $30 to spend could pick three items from the $10 bin, or six items from the $5-or-less bin, or any combination up to $30. Voilà! You just sold several items in one swoop.
That strategy also helps customers visualize how much they’ll spend as they make their choices, which makes shopping fun.
Strategy 3: Sell Dreamy Stocking Stuffers
Help your customers prove that big things come in small packages. They can’t stuff a bow, treestand, or 3D target into a stocking, but they can slip in a photo or clever note describing the gift. Highlight dreamy items like sights, range-finders, trail cameras, GoPros, Tactacams, and electronic scent-elimination devices. You could even sell them an ATV or electronic bike, and suggest they put the key in their loved one’s stocking.
Strategy 4: Gift Cards
If your customer is unsure or hesitant about your many options, recommend a gift card or certificate. These simple, convenient gifts help boost sales, and ensure archers get what they want for their setups. In fact, Gift Card Granny reports that 65% of gift-card holders spend an extra 38% beyond the card’s value. Display your gift cards on your countertop to entice buyers to include them as stocking-stuffer options.
Set up a tree or create other holiday inspired displays around your store. Photo Credit: ATA
Displays and Advertisements
Create attention-grabbing displays to maximize your holiday business. Clever, holiday-themed displays can highlight your stocking stuffers and trigger impulse sales. Include signage, and display the products so they look appealing from every angle. For more merchandising tips, click here and here.
Also advertise your offerings on your website and social-media accounts, and remember that videos and photos generate more attention than plain-text posts. Email your promotions, too. After all, email marketing is easy and effective.
And if you have time, create a gift guide. It can be a fantastic marketing tool that advertises specific items and outlines your stocking-stuffer options to pull customers into your store.
If you need help refining your holiday sales and selling techniques, contact Nicole Nash, ATA’s manager of range and retail programs, at nicolenash@archerytrade.org or (866) 266-2776, ext. 116.
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