Retail
Jump-Start Your Spring Cleaning
Has winter weather trapped you inside? Seize the opportunity to spring-clean your shop.
Photo Credit: ATA
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Author: Jackie Holbrook
As winter weather walloped the country in recent weeks, everyone thought spring couldn’t come soon enough. On the other hand, in two months or less you’ll be trading your snow shovel for a garden trowel.
To ensure you inject a little fresh air into your life in the days ahead, try spring-cleaning your bow shop this week or next.
February and March are great months to spruce up. Trade-show season is fading fast and winter indoor leagues are almost over. It won’t be long before your shop refills with customers preparing to shoot outside while stocking up on turkey and spring bear-hunting supplies.
Clean both literally and figuratively: purge your old inventory and deep clean your shelves. Photo Credit: Havana Outdoors
Do a Deep Clean
Your first step in the spring-cleaning ritual is to try seeing your shop with fresh eyes: Picture what your customers see when they walk through your door. First impressions are everything in retailing. A clean shop will boost your sales and improve customers’ experiences. Consider asking a friend or family member to give a frank opinion about your shop’s looks.
Spring-cleaning isn’t about your routines. It’s about tackling aspects of your shop that you typically overlook. When was the last time you dusted the taxidermy, washed the walls, or vacuumed the vents? It’s easy to forsake those details when catering to customers most of the year.
For a cleaning checklist read “Spring Cleaning: Don’t Forget Your Shop!”
Inventories and Price Adjustments
Proper inventory management is another key to success. Point-of-sales systems help track what’s going in and out of the shop daily. But you must still do physical counts. Inventory numbers are often low in January in retail shops, so that’s a good time to count. If you can’t do a physical count, at least conduct a cyclic, periodic or seasonal count. Review the prices on your products and make adjustments. That task helps you make room for new inventory and increase sales.
Display some of the new inventory you purchased at #ATA2019. Photo Credit: ATA
Refresh Your Merchandising
Showcase all the awesome products you picked up for your customers at #ATA2019. Highlight that merchandise with eye-catching displays. Window, rack and end-cap displays should be organized, appealing and well lighted. Your signage should convey important information and answer obvious questions.
Display merchandise that’s seasonally relevant. With spring nearing, it’s a good time to feature supplies for bowhunting turkeys and bears. Use the “Rule of 3’s.” That is, you’ll engage more people by displaying products in groups of three. For an in-depth look at how to rock in-shop merchandising, read “What is Merchandising? Draw in Customers with These 4 Tips.”
Make sure your merchandising setups don’t interfere with your shop’s traffic flow. Walk through the aisles to ensure they’re roomy, and look for ways to group similar items together.
Tech Tidy-Up
While you’re at it, include your computer in the cleanup to make it faster and more efficient for you, your staff and your customers. Delete unused files that simply eat up storage space. If your computer’s “background” is littered with files, create folders that organize them for easy reference. Make sure your software is up to date, and includes the latest antivirus software.
Refresh your website and social-media pages. Delete old events and sales information. Make sure your contact information is current. If you haven’t posted to social media in weeks, post photos of the shop after your spring-clean. Encourage customers to swing by for a sneak peek at your new displays.
If you have questions about how to improve your shop’s appearance and organization, contact Kurt Smith, ATA’s director of industry relations, at (717) 578-0736, or kurtsmith@archerytrade.org.
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