Monday 10 April, 2017

Creative Ideas for Clearance Sales, Part 2


Springtime is the perfect time to run a clearance sale in your store. This is a time when people are making room in their lives and their homes for new merchandise, so it is a great time to make room in your store by putting your backstock up for sale at a hefty discount. But […]


Springtime is the perfect time to run a clearance sale in your store. This is a time when people are making room in their lives and their homes for new merchandise, so it is a great time to make room in your store by putting your backstock up for sale at a hefty discount.

But simply putting all of your unwanted merchandise in a retail dump bin display and putting a sign above it that says, “30% Off” isn’t necessarily going to drive sales. Customers often do not notice retail merchandising displays for clearance sales if you do nothing special to draw attention to them.

In Part 1, I shared a number of creative ideas for running fun and successful clearance sales. Here are a few more!

• Buy One Get One. A sale to Buy One Get One Half Off may be tempting, but it also makes it harder to move inventory that you want gone. A BOGO sale is the best way to clear your retail display shelves fast.

• Run daily or weekly specials on different items throughout the duration of the clearance sale. In Part 1, I shared an idea for raising your discount on all clearance items week after week to generate a sense of urgency. This is an alternate idea where you increase discounts on specific types of items on different days or weeks. There are a couple of advantages to this. One is that customers will continually check in to see what deals you are offering; they will not want to miss the one they are waiting for. The other is that you do not necessarily need to call this a clearance sale. You can just run it as a series of “deals” and avoid the sometimes negative connotations which go with inventory reduction.

• Hand out a bag at the entrance of the store and allow customers to fill it with as many clearance items as they can fit inside. Then sell the bag for one flat rate price. This is a very fun way to shop, and customers also will feel like they are getting away with extra savings if they are really good at packing their bags. It can even become an informal contest between shoppers who are visiting the store together to see who can fit the most inside their bags.

Bargain bins. While retail dump bins are not the most creative of concepts, customers do love digging through them to hunt for something awesome. So do not overlook this idea when you are setting up your clearance sales. Just make sure that you set up creative and eye-catching signage to draw attention to your dump bins. They can be easily missed.

All of these ideas should help you to free up space on your merchandise display racks. These are not the only ideas for getting your backstock to fly off your shelves however; in Part 3, I will give you even more great tactics you can use!

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