subject: Change-up your Store and Stay Current with the Market [print this page] Change-up your Store and Stay Current with the Market
Success with dollar stores requires constant awareness and willingness to change. You must know the exact wants and needs of their shoppers. They must also know exactly the items that have fallen out of favor with their customers. Add to the need for market awareness and response to change the need to continually drive cost out of every aspect of the business. Pressure to successfully complete this while building ever-more shoppers coming into the store and buying. In this article I present change-up your store and stay current with the market. We will examine specific actions to take as you recognize and respond to your market.
#1) Recognize and acknowledge the changing preferences of your customers.
Accept the reality of the retail marketplace. The reality is customer preferences are always changing. In a market like we have today the changes include a focus on the staples associated with basic needs. If you are running a dollar store your very existence depends on being willing to make change and then actually recognizing changes in the marketplace.
#2) Perfectly align your dollar store to customer needs and wants.
Success with dollar stores is not simply about recognizing things are changing. It is about making the correct changes to your business. The best way to make the right changes is to continually solicit customer feedback and then to add new products as the message becomes louder and clearer. Be grateful as you accept feedback from more and more shoppers about products they want to see. Then add those products to your inventory.
#3) Never hold on to outdated or unsold merchandise.
Running a dollar store is not easy. You must identify and then eliminate outdated and unsold items. Your old, unsold inventory adds no value to the shopping experience for customers. Liquidate these items and then reinvest in the hot-selling, in-demand items customers seek. These red-hot selling items are an important part of the formula for success with dollar stores.
#4) Experiment before adding full-blown orders of potential new products.
Stop gambling with huge test orders of potential new products. You simply cannot afford to buy hundreds of each new item in the hope it will meet with customer acceptance. Make your first order of every newly added item much smaller. Then allow the actual sales of items in your store to become the reason you add a second larger order. Make new items prove themselves first.
