These dog grenades – they squeak when the dog bites them – have been one of the hits of our impulse gift range. Selling through plenty of them in three weeks along with a bunch of other products goes to show what newsagents can sell to shoppers who visit to make another purchase. I am sure they did not visit us thinking I’ll buy a dog grenade today.
The other hit has been the banana you squeeze. It serves no purpose I can see. Mose people who pick it up and squeeze purchase it. Very nice.
Adding items priced at a few dollars and with a margin of more than 50% to any other purchase is wonderful. The trick as I see it is to do this without giving your shop over to these items. No, I don;t want to become one of those outlets wholly focused on fads and novelty lines. There is a time and place for these – school holidays and leading to Christmas.
Based on our most recent experience I am confident that we can sell between $1,500 and $2,000 of products brought in just for a school holiday season. Yes, I know – we are in a large shopping mall and this gives us plenty of traffic. Only in terms of volume.
There are many opportunities in newsagencies for what we broadly consider to be gifts. The items we featured in this range is not what most newsagents would call gifts, certainly not a permanent gift department.
We purchased the items for a specific reason and it worked for us. This is what we have to do as out businesses transition – leverage existing traffic into new lines. We need to do this for the sales and to show our customers that we are not a traditional newsagency … we can satisfy a broader range of their needs.