“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… Read More

The mantra of American business has always been “bigger is better,” and the focus even for many independent shopkeepers has been on increasing the store’s gross sales figures from year to year.  That may be very difficult to do in today’s economy — but the good news is that a decline in sales does not… Read More

If you think a sweet-heart sale is a Valentine’s Day promotion, think again.  It refers to employees “sweet-hearting” a friend at the point of sale, in other words giving a discount to someone not entitled to one. It can also refer to giving a undeserved refund to a friend or acquaintance, or to handing over… Read More

We all have merchandise that we would like to have gone.  Perhaps it has refused to sell even at a sale price, or it’s out of date, or it just doesn’t fit with current merchandising plans.  And yet we have good money tied up in these items, so we’re not quite ready to give them… Read More

The first days of 2010 will soon be upon us, so it is time to think about New Year’s resolutions. The recent Gifts and Dec Direct online poll showed that some 50 percent of voters in last week’s poll plan to make resolutions for their personal lives and their business. So aside from wanting to… Read More

We went to get our Christmas tree from our favorite tree farm on the outskirts of town a few days ago.  The owner, Eric Jensen, is trying to make up for the days that were lost when 17” of snow fell here in Madison, WI in less than 24 hours — followed by a day… Read More

The totals will soon be in for the holiday season of 2009, and whether we’re pleased or not with our sales, it will be time to face the slower winter months.  Now is a good time to give your shoppers a good reason to come back in to your store in January. The most common… Read More

You can’t be in retailing today without taking credit cards, even if you’re selling Renaissance clothing and accessories.  The percentage of our store’s sales paid for in plastic has risen dramatically since the start of our business. — and so have the charges we pay to have these credit card sales processed. Many of us… Read More

“Self service means no service,” as I wrote in last week’s blog. We all know what kind of service we hope to offer our customers through our friendly, sales personnel well-versed in the benefits of every product we sell. Certainly Ron Popeil, who you may know as the king of television marketing, is friendly and… Read More

This Friday has been termed “Black Friday” by the media, because of the idea that this one day’s sales are so important that they put major retailers in the black.  That doesn’t tend to be true for independent retailers, who miss out on the feeding frenzy of shoppers flocking to the malls and big box… Read More