“Congrats! You’ve survived 2009!” read the letter arrived in our store’s December mail, packaged together with a festive green party horn for celebrating the arrival of 2010. This unique mailing from Big Al of Notes and Queries invited their retail accounts to share what they’d done this past year to insure their store’s survival. In exchange, Notes and Queries offered free freight on the customer’s first order in January, 2010.

Notes & Queries, which was founded by Big Al (Alan Harnik), is the leading distributor of design-led greeting cards, gift wrap, and stationery lines from England. They’re going to be in New York at the Gift Fair next week, booth 2245, if you want to stop by to see their imported paper goods, which we’ve carried in our store for years.

Big Al’s daughter Vanessa generously agreed to share some of the best responses they received to their creative communique. I will include some of these in this week’s blog, and a few more next week.   (By the way, mailing a party horn together with a card or letter would be a great idea for an inexpensive promotion to your shop’s top customers!)

Here are this week’s Notes & Queries responses to the question “What did you do in 2009 to insure your store’s survival?”

Laeri of Play Toys and Gifts in New Milford, Connecticut wrote, “We carry nothing that’s in Walmart. We smile a lot.  We gift wrap with no fee. We carry cool cards.” 

Kat Ranalli of Pages in West Chester, Pennsylvania said, “Yes, I survived 2009, but I can only guess why. After all, I have had my card shop for 25 years, but the past year was by far the most challenging. Most likely it is because I was even more careful than ever with inventory control. I kept the card walls filled but not excessive.

I was careful to quickly reorder fast-moving cards and other items. I also discontinued frames and photo albums, realizing how slow they move, probably because of big-box discounts and selection. I even made the brave decision to NOT order boxed Christmas cards, having so many leftover from the previous year. Interestingly, I sold most of them at full-price, to my delight!

That enabled me to reduce my current financial obligations and finally get a return on last year’s painful investments! I took a higher deductible on our health insurance policy in order to keep my premium from rising drastically. It still went up, but only slightly. I questioned my insurance broker when my business insurance rose, and she found a new policy that saves me hundreds of dollars with no loss of coverage! I dropped all printed advertising. I did not order fancy bags or tissue. My husband and I worked the shop as much as we could stand, paying just 1 employee for only 6 days a month. I put more "dead" items on sale.

 

Interestingly, my "frequent buyer’s club" program of BUY 10 CARDS GET ONE FREE", now 5 years old, is more popular than ever. Even my seemingly wealthy customers just LOVE that FREE CARD!”

Kate Randall of Antigone Books in Tucson wrote, “Having great stuff (such as Notes & Queries cards) and making people laugh as well as think.”

Christie Olson Day of Gallery Bookshop & Bookwinkle’s Children’s Books, Mendocino, CA, wrote, “I’ll tell you how we survived 2009.  We did it by following up on every single awesome special offer our vendors made to us, like this one!  No kidding — I’ll do just about anything for free freight, especially in a tough year.  Thanks for thinking up creative ways to make it happen.”

 

A sincere thank you to the retailers who generously took time to tell others what worked for their shop during the challenging days of 2009.  Come back next week for the second installment of great ideas!  Independent retailers are well known for being supportive of each other, and sharing what works can help us all be more successful.

 

Happy Retailing,

Carol “Orange” Schroeder