5 Ways to Make Your Retail Store Grow Faster
If you own a retail store or many then you know it’s not always easy to keep customers coming back for more. But rest assured there are several strategies the best in the business are using to keep foot traffic flowing. Whether its partnering with another retailer to leverage their customer base or offering a new service here are a few ideas that you can start working on today to give your sales a boost.
1. Carve out space in your store for a complimentary retailer. If you are struggling to make your sales quotas or just want to reach the next level, partnering with another brand is often beneficial. Having a store within your store to feature products from another retailer is a classic play retailers use to increase traffic and sales. There are many retailers pursuing this strategy right now. Sephora has announced a partnership with Kohl’s which will see more than 850 Sephora shops inside of Kohl’s stores. Ulta Beauty has a deal with Target to open at least 800 mini Ulta Beauty stores within Target stores.
Nearly a decade ago when Best Buy was trying to turn its business around one of the things it did that was quite effective was to allow Apple, starting in 2013, to set up store in store selling areas within Best Buy locations becoming one of the first retailers Apple partnered with. After that Samsung, Sony and Microsoft followed.
It’s hard to increase sales if you don’t have enough traffic in your store and while you might not be able to partner with a big name there are likely opportunities to partner with local brands even if it’s just for a limited time. You can charge a commission for the use of the space and you will also benefit from additional customers that become aware of your brand in the process.
2. Offer free samples. You don’t have to give away your first quarter sales after all you are trying to increase them but you can provide customers with a small product sample to get them in the door. Everyone loves receiving free stuff. How many times have you made a trip to Costco just to see what tasty treats it was giving a way for free? Lindt stores often give customers a free piece of chocolate upon entering the store which naturally makes you want to buy one of their products in order to have some more.
Trader Joe’s is another retailer that gives away a lot of free samples and “what a lot of people may not know is the biggest marketing expense we have at Trader Joe's is actually just letting people try our food,” says Tara Miller, Trader Joe’s Director of Marketing. Customers can sample anything they want to in a Trader Joe’s store as long as it does not have to be cooked.
Is there something you could give away that does not require a large investment but would draw traffic into your store on a repeat basis?
3. Invest in your employees. How often do you get amazing service when you are out shopping? I bet not often which means there’s a lost opportunity right there. More sales are lost to disgruntled employees than you realize. I used to wonder why Starbucks employees are always so happy then I learned it wasn’t by accident, Starbucks takes investing in its employees seriously.
Back in the early 1990s Starbucks became the first private employer in the United States to offer both full and part time eligible employees stock options. That means the happier the customer the fatter the employee’s wallet. To put this in perspective, if you had invested $10,000 in Starbuck’s IPO in 1992 that investment would be worth $4 million by 2021. Even Warren Buffett would be impressed with those returns.
Stock options are not the only employee perk. Since 1988, health care has been offered to all full time and part time Starbucks’ employees including coverage for their partners. In 2014 Starbucks introduced a complete tuition reimbursement program for employees located in the United States who worked at least an average of 20 hours per week. A champion of diversity, in 2018 Starbucks achieved gender and race pay equity for all staff in the United States. This is a feat that not many companies can say they have achieved.
Part of Starbucks’ focus on its employees stems from the fact that the father of Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, was injured badly while working at his blue-collar job. Schultz’s dad received no health care or worker’s compensation and it ruined his ability to achieve the American dream. That scarred Schultz and then motivated him to create a workplace his dad would be proud to work in.
When you make meaningful investments in your employees they invest in you. Starbucks has lower employee turnover than many of its competitors allowing it to develop relationships with its customers that have a deeper degree of intimacy.
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4. Start selling food. People like to eat, including your customers. And they often like to eat while on a shopping trip. Most of the time the food court is the busiest place in a mall. Many retailers are opening restaurants within their stores as a way to lure more customers in. In 2019 Crate and Barrel opened its first restaurant in Chicago called The Table at Crate. Speaking about the new restaurant former Crate and Barrel CEO Neela Montgomery said: “it’s not like everyone comes to us once a month.” “Having a restaurant will help us drive more frequency and more traffic to the store and also create a different level of loyalty by having that experience with us.” “It was a win right out of the gate,” said Neela “it was profitable in the second month.”
Ikea is another retailer who knows about the power of selling food. How many times have you gone shopping for a couch at a local furniture store and ate a plate of Swedish meatballs while you were there like you can at Ikea? Ikea didn’t have to add food courts to its stores but it did and those food courts are so popular that at one point IKEA was named the world’s sixth largest food chain. Those food courts also generate large amounts of foot traffic for the retailer.
You can go big with a large restaurant or you could just have a donut or a coffee stand. Selling a food item that consumers actively seek out on a regular basis is a great way to generate more traffic. This is one of the reasons why Walmart sells groceries. Groceries drive frequent purchases and Walmart knows if it can get you in the door to buy groceries you will stay and buy from other departments.
5. Offer a service. Many retailers start selling services as a way to boost the top line. Nordstrom offers its customers a number of services based on the store location including: beauty services, shoe repairs, personal stylists, gift wrapping, alternations and dry cleaning.
Kohl’s has a partnership with Amazon where Amazon customers can return their items at Kohl’s stores. Kohl’s noticed that when it allowed Amazon customers to return unwanted purchases at Kohl’s as part of this returns service, it acquired two million new customers in 2020 alone.
If you sell skincare can you offer skincare classes? If you have a restaurant can you sell cooking classes? A service can be wrapped around many of the products we buy today.