Looking for a way to bring shoppers into to all of the stores in your tourist area, neighborhood or Buy Local district?  Consider this charm bracelet promotion adapted from the quilting stores of Nebraska.

The idea is that shoppers buy a charm bracelet for a nominal amount (such as $10), and then they receive a free charm when they visit each participating merchant.  At first I thought that this sounded like an expensive way to get potential new customers into the store, but then sales rep Mary Aschenbrener showed me two lines of charms that start at $1.10 each.  Bracelets are available for $2.30.

Between the two lines, Delightfully Charming and High Concepts, there are thousands of charms to choose from. We could, for example, give out little gourmet kitchen tools to represent our shop from an assortment that includes chef hats, whisks, mixers, measuring cups, graters — as well as teabags, pizza, muffins, pies, wine bottles, sushi, and a cookie jar.

You could offer this promotion during a limited time, such as a day or evening, and have the proceeds of the sale of the bracelet go to a charity that you support.  Another option is to have a “charm of the month” that you give out in order to bring customers back regularly.

The Nebraska quilting stores have used the charm idea as part of a “Shop Hop,” with a passport that gets stamped at every store over a large geographic area.  A completed passport entitles the participant to enter a drawing for grand prizes, and each individual shop also does a store drawing. 

I love the fact that although these quilting stores are competing for sales, they realize that it helps keep customers excited about quilting when they participate in this promotion. It also makes shopping into a social experience as groups of women get together to visit the various stores, sometimes even as part of a bus tour.

Another variation on this concept, which may be more appropriate for bars and restaurants, is to have participants pick a card from a special deck at each location. The person with the best poker hand at the end of the event gets a prize.  You would just need to provide each location with a few identical unopened decks of cards, depending on how many participants you expect.

Encouraging customers to visit all the shops or restaurants in an area is a great way to bring introduce new customers to the businesses.  If your shopping district (or type of shops) has had a unique promotion that you’ve had success with, I encourage you to share it.  Cooperation helps everyone succeed!

Happy Retailing,

Carol “Orange” Schroeder