On Monday at 5:30pm we close our current newsXpress Forest Hill store which occupies 330 square metres on level two and, all being well, at 8am the next day we open in our temporary location, a 97 square metre store on level one.
To prepare for the move we have been running a sale offering items at between 25% and 50% off. The department which has performed the worst through this sale is stationery – 25% off did not generate any sales lift at all. We are not too concerned as we have other stores where we can move this stock. That said, it is interesting that 25% off gifts, art and books did well while stationery did not. In our temporary store we will only be carrying high volume conveience stationery lines.
We have not discounted cards, magazines, newspapers and a bunch of other items.
While this has been happening on the shop floor, we have been busy clearing out the back room and de-cluttering so that by the time we get to the move what we have to focus on is what we actually want to move. We have also started removing infrastructure which we need in the new location so that the transition is as painless as possible.
Good Luck with the shift Mark.
I dont envy you one little bit
Stationery is a difficult department to draw impule sales through via discounts. If people already have several staplers and a draw full of pens and textas then no discount is going to make them buy more.
Good luck with the move.
Good luck Mark, been there done that a couple of times. Hope all goes smoothly for your team.
Cheers
Al