How to ensure a proper flow of customers during a store closing liquidation sale?
There are a multitude of factors and inventory strategies that have to be considered when you conduct a store closing liquidation sale.
These include everything from wondering how much merchandise you will need to stock your store with before you begin the sale.
To determining whether you should hire an outside consulting firm to conduct the closing sale for you instead of doing it yourself.
For many retailers the biggest question is, “how do I need to set up the store to generate the best sales”?
With long lines of customers and minimal discounts
And looking like this after the final inventory sale is over
There are so many choices and issues that they deal with during this time.
Many retailers fail to realize how important it is to have a proper flow of customer traffic through their store during a store closing liquidation sale.
If this kind of sale is promoted and implemented properly it should produce up to four to seven times the normal traffic flow or more during a short period of a few weeks.
Of course, if the sale is not promoted correctly or implemented in the right way this may not come to pass.
That will make it very difficult for the store owner to move the merchandise out in a timely manner.
Lower profits and higher expenses are often seen when this happens, but there is a way to avoid those problems.
One of the best ways to avoid slow traffic flow during a store closing liquidation sale is to rearrange and set up the store in the proper way to accommodate the large influx of retail traffic that is desired and expected.
If the store is not set up correctly, there could be a loss of sales because customers will often become disgruntled waiting in long lines and not being helped in a timely manner.
- Poorly set up stores and poorly organized merchandise mean that customers they are not being directed to buy multiple items and too many people simply milling around.
- It is true that there will always be some people wandering as they browse shelves, look for specific items, and backtrack to look for things that they might have forgotten.
- However, most stores have a general pattern to their traffic flow and this pattern should be organized and make sense in such a way that it allows customers to move through the store and to the checkouts in an orderly fashion.
This will help to keep theft levels low, as well as the aggravation of customers and employees.
There are some specific ways to avoid losing sales with the jumbled mess that could potentially be created from a store closing sale.
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One of the most important ways to help with the proper traffic flow is to have extra cash registers and point of sale terminals throughout the store to handle the heavier flow of traffic.
Designating certain terminals for cash only may be an option for some retailers.
These point of sale areas will not need credit card purchasing capabilities and are easier to set up than normal registers.
Making sure that there are enough registers and enough employees on hand for the customer traffic will keep customers in the store longer to purchase more.
This will also keep them coming back throughout the sale to see if there was something that they overlooked or if the prices have been lowered again.
These happy customers also tell others about the high quality of the sale, which brings in even more traffic and can help raise the traffic flow beyond a retailer’s expectations.
The savvy retailer will also consider moving their cash registers from the normal locations that they are in, so that adjustments can be made for the long lines of traffic that are anticipated.
It is distressing to customers that come into the store if they have to weave their way through long checkout lines just to get to the merchandise.
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Some of them may not bother, and even if they do it once, they might not be willing to do it again.
The proper flow of traffic during a store closing liquidation sale is something that many retailers may not have considered but has proven to be essential for the success of a sale of this nature.
Ease of finding merchandise and a timely check out process are very important to keep customers coming back until the doors close.