Of course, it sold in less than a week, six weeks before we had to pay for the stock. And, we sold another one from the same range for full retail at $350.00. And, another after that. Oh, and another $1,000 from the range in less than a week of getting the stock. Now, in week two, more sales, more money made.
The mistake of the nay-sayer in the business was to regard it as a plush item. Okay, it is a plush item, but, people are bot buying it as a plus item, they are buying it as a collectible, a very special collectible – rare, celebratory.
They people buying are 35+, not your traditional plush shoppers. males, too – again, not traditional plush shoppers.
Now before you jump to conclusions, the success I am writing about here is in a small suburban newsagency. It’s not in a shopping centre. The area is middle class, skewing to an older age.
Imagine losing several thousand dollars in sales by saying no, it won’t sell here, it’s too expensive, our customers would never buy a $550 plush item, not in a million years, denying your business the opportunity. We do, though. I’ve done it for sure – said something won’t sell without trying it.
Now, I am not saying try everything. What I am saying is that your immediate instinct is to say no, check in with yourself. Question why you are saying no and allow yourself a moment to think you might be wrong.
Being open to something means thinking through the opportunities, it means researching:
- The current interest in the brand.
- Who else stocks the product.
- Whether there is an online opportunity.
- Allied products you may have or could stock.
- The value of the demographic to which it may appeal.
- The opportunity to attract net new traffic through the product.
- The risk and wether you have capacity for this.
- The possible upside.
- A recall of how often you have been wrong before.
This may seem like hard work. In the contest of the product I am referring to in this post, in two weeks it is a $1,500 GP beneficial range that I am sure will track to be worth $10,000 – $15,000 to this one business through the rest of 2024. This is valuable. It’s a result we can expect because we did not buy in on the instant no thanks when first looking at the possibility.
Our local Aussie newsagency businesses should not be defined by our own ignorance, they can be more successful than our imagination sometimes allows.
What we can sell, how we can sell, when we can sell and to whom we can sell is different today then. a few years ago and to when our channel was created.