I received a text message from a newsagent a few weeks ago advising they were rinning a gift sale to reach $100,000 in gist sales for the financial year. They weere close and wanted to pass their goal.
This morning I got a message advising they had reached $98,718.43 in gift sales, just shy of their goal. The GREAT NEWS is that this is 32% up on their gift sales of $74,784 a year earlier. The FY2011/12 year was up on the 2010/11 results of $45,000 in gifts.
This is truly EXCELLENT NEWS. A husband and wife newsagent team making deliberate decisions and moves chasing growth in a high margin and traffic generating category. What an excellent end of financial year story.
To provide context, this is a regional mid-size newsagency. While some older categories are declining, they are growing sales and new traffic by being professional outcome-focussed retailers. And they are banking the results. This makes their business more valuable when they decide to sell.
Stories like this make my day.
Love stories like this.
We’ve managed to get a 91% increase in giftware sales this FY. A large chunk of this has been in the last 4 months when we’ve really gone hard. We’ve also managed to increase our profit margin on those sales compared to the previous year.
We’re in a mining area and over the last 8-10 months have seen well over 1000 jobs cut in the area. It’s seen a decline in customer numbers and sales in some departments (comparing month by month – we’re still up year on year). We’re still holding our own well. We know many other businesses in the area aren’t doing as well.
Congratulations to these guys for bucking the trend in retail sales.
Fantastic news!
We’re a lotto kiosk in a busy shopping centre and have to redesign our kiosk. We want to include gifts in our redesign.
Anyone know of great gift lines to introduce? Plush to novelty items to steel/silver items (example- flasks)??
Any tips or ideas are very much appreciated.
Our goal was to get our gift sales as close as possible to our card sales.
Card sales $257k gift sales $254k a 19% increase in giftware off a very good base.
The department has huge potential and for us just continues to perform exceptionally.
Alex – Beanie Boos from Big Balloon, started selling a few months ago and can’t believe their popularity.
We have a stand on our lease line and are constantly refilling it.
Two weeks of school holidays just started and I expect to sell a stack of them.
This is fantastic. We have very similar results in our shop. The main reason for our growth is without a doubt my wife but there is also a couple of other reasons why we too are enjoying year on year growth in the gift department;
1. My wife….(at the top of the list)…her work in this category has been amazing.
2. Regular attendance to major gift fairs.
3. Supplier deals through our marketing group (yes, I am a member of newsXpress).
4. Network of peers (people to bounce ideas off of and to discuss what works for different stores and to challenge each other to grow sales).
All of the above and more are helping us to grow and grow and grow.
Alex, my best advice would be to get to the gift fairs, what works for one store may not work for the next. Grow your network and talk too similar outlets such as yours, you wont be dissapointed.
Am busy trying to set new targets for us for the next 12 months, really looking forward to new challenges.
Happy Selling everybody.
Al
Great advice Al.