We missed the deadline for placing our Back to School order with GNS so rather than pay the full price they wanted for catalogue items we decided to skip Back to School altogether and run with an Art Sale.
Back to School is not big for us given our demographic – retirement villages and the Neighbours film lot – and given the huge push from Big W in the centre and Officeworks nearby. We’re finding having the Art Sale offers a point of difference. The mistake on our part has not hurt us as much as we expected.
WOW. Great outcome. It would sometimes seem like you are spending a lot of time and effort on things like back to school, when all you are doing is trying to compete like you say with the really big chains. How much do you end up with on the slim margins you probably run at to try and match them? These campaigns are sort of traditional, but are they still relevant?
We all need as small businesses to be very careful of the 20% effort for the last 2% profit theory. I know a friend has just given up Darrell Lea as the 20% margin, the 1 1/2 trip to pick it up (costs about $20 fuel), the cost of air conditioning, all made it a very slim profit. It was taking up prime real estate and not earning its way. Actually like some of your long term magazines, the labour component probably pushed it into the negative. We don’t always value our labour component enough.
You have mentioned working smarter on your business rather than flogging away in your business, and that is a really good example here with the art items. I like it!
Clem, it is a margin game. Sometimes products like Darrell Lea are good for their point of difference – the key is to NOT have too many of those. We have been into Art for two years and bring it out like this twice a year. Each time it kicks sales along well. To sell $800.00 of Art product in a day for good margin is most welcome!