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One of the trickiest parts of thrift retail is how long to keep items out for sale. To make it tougher, the right answer today may be the wrong answer tomorrow.
Stale kills.
A regular flow of fresh merchandise coming to the sales floor is the core of that idea. Something I have written about before. How fresh, is another layer.
One impediment to a fresh look can be the oldest or poorest quality stuff already on the sales floor.
It’s a little like the banana section of the produce department. They have such a short shelf life, that it’s easy to tell the freshest from the oldest. A section with too many over-ripe bananas can cause people to pass over the area. That’s an extreme example, the ripeness clock ticks a little slower in a thrift store, but it does tick.
Thrift shopper visit frequency is driven in large part by how fresh merchandise seems on each visit.
I recently spent a Saturday merchandising at one of my stores. It's something I don’t get to do often, it was a lot of fun. I also enjoyed talking directly to several customers. Overall it was a great day and I picked up on a couple of trends.
More to the point, this store is struggling with sales, has plenty of stuff in the back and the sales floor looked full. In the time I had, I focused on furniture since it’s our top category and takes up the most room.
I needed to create some space on the full-looking sales floor to bring fresh stuff out. So I took a detailed walk, looking closely at what was out there, where, and why. It didn’t take long for a few things to jump out.
The entrance displays looked good and were seasonally correct. First impressions are so important.
There were goods with sold tags taking up valuable selling space. That’s essentially storing sold goods on the sales floor while storing not sold goods in the back room.
There were a lot of items that were at the end of the color discount cycle. The color would change on the next business day, so this stuff already wasn’t selling at 75% off.
There was stuff out that had no business being for sale. Low-quality, particle board with peeling paper, water stains, and seriously outdated styles.
Things were grouped by general category but not as coherently as I believed possible.
So I got to work.
I moved all of the sold goods to the sold goods holding area in the back.
The stuff that didn’t have any business being on the sales floor, 75% off, and poor quality went to the back heading for their final resting place.
Subcategories of goods were pulled together, small bookcases all in one area, glass occasional tables together, and so on.
Suddenly there was tons of room. This always happens, when a department is being remerchandised customers seem to gravitate to see what is going on. So I sold several more pieces, creating even more space!
Staff working in the back were already sorting, cleaning pricing, and prepping goods to bring out. Once I had space it was a matter of filling the sales floor. That caused more sorting and rearranging as the assortment of available items shifted. Some categories expanded some shrank.
Once all the fresh goods were out of the back there was still some space in prime shopping areas. It’s amazing how things sell faster when someone is redoing a department. A full front of the store is more valuable than a full back of a store, so we pulled some goods from a less-trafficked area.
At the actual end of the day, the furniture department was fresh, full, organized, and easy to shop.
Every furniture donation that came in that day went to the floor as well as some accumulated from earlier in the week.
The store had a great day in sales that day and the next.
Of course, we were fortunate enough to have plenty of donations to work with.
. . . . . .
Plentiful donations aren’t always the case.
Still keeping a sales floor appealing to customers is important. When donations are light, the store still has to look fresh and full. There are a few cheats to help maintain the look.
One of my favorites has always been shifting goods around. Flipping end cap displays, moving circle, and 4-way racks around. It’s amazing how a display not selling in one spot will take off in another. It worked at Walmart, it works in thrift.
Customers tend to shop similar patterns when they visit, so that “new” display may simply be one they didn’t walk by last time.
. . .
If goods on gondolas or shelves are light, leave the bottom shelf empty. It’s essentially storage space anyway. Nothing should be on the riser shelf either. Keep the most merchandise closest to eye level. The same is true of endcaps.
To me, a perfectly faced grocery store canned soup aisle is a thing of beauty. Every can pulled to the front of the shelf, double stacked if needed, with labels facing forward. What can I say, It’s amazing.
Have you ever chosen a couple of faced items and noticed that there was nothing behind them? That’s a great cheat. Thrift can’t make things that beautiful, but still, facing goods to the front and leaving the back empty helps create that fresh and full look.
. . .
Aisle spacing. I saw this a lot at our local Kohls during Covid. This is easier in textiles than in hard lines. Taking out an aisle, and spreading out the rest can make aisles easier to shop and feel spacious. Or take one section out of a run making aisles shorter, and expand the main aisle space. There is a fine line between plenty of customer space and looking sparse.
If low-quality furniture has to fill space, segregate them in a value section.
A Secret Fresh Hack.
There is always that worst item that made it to the sales floor, it might be too good to throw away, seemingly not good enough for anyone to buy.
In a department that is overstocked have a free item. Just one or two at a time. Yes free. It might keep something out of a landfill. It can also serve someone that maybe doesn’t have the money to buy a piece of furniture. Some rules, no holds, and whoever takes it out gets it.
Fresh - Full - Organized - Priced Right
The recipe for a well-merchandised store, no matter the flavor.