The Magic of a Full Store
You can't sell from an empty cart
Think about stores that felt good, appealing, and fun to shop in. I bet they looked full.
Keeping the sales floor full, or at least looking full, was an early lesson in my retail career. As a teenager working in a chain mall clothing store that was going broke forced me to sharpen those skills.
As our inventory dwindled, customers that walked in quickly left, often saying that we must be closing. We had been instructed to pretend we were staying open.
Sales were terrible and it was depressing to work in a half-empty store.
The back wall of this narrow deep store was set up with shelving units for jeans. It turned out that they weren’t even screwed to the wall. (I wonder what OSHA would think of that) So we pushed them forward eliminating half of the retail space, then we condensed and re-merchandised. Suddenly we had a smaller but full-looking sales floor.
Sales went up. We kept pushing the shelving wall forward as inventory dwindled.
Eventually, some suit (I was 19) from their corporate office 1,500 miles away showed up to see what was going on. By then about 2/3 of the sales floor had been eliminated. He said we couldn’t do that. In that now huge, backroom full of empty fixtures I asked if he wanted it changed back. He didn’t answer and talked about something else, so it stayed that way. Also, never saw or heard from him again.
By keeping a full looking well-merchandised store, sales were beating everyone in our region. Suddenly we were receiving inventory from stores as they closed. The shelf wall moved back and forth depending on inventory. Customers never noticed, or at least didn’t care. We were the last store to close in the midwest.
It isn’t always as easy as moving a wall around. In thrift keeping a store looking full can be a challenge during slow donation times.
In thrift, customers don’t care if donations are light, or if there are issues in production. They want to feel like they have plenty of choices.
Often in thrift, when donations are slow there is a temptation to quit pulling goods that have completed their color rotation cycle. There is a fine line between a full store and a stale store, it’s tricky. Customers catch on to stale as quickly as they notice empty. At a minimum quality pulls have to be done.
If it’s a chronic problem, focus on growing donations. It’s a classic lead measure.
Otherwise keeping a store looking fresh and full can be a challenge when not enough is getting to the sales floor.
A few tricks:
The look in the main aisles should be a top priority. End displays should be kept full and fresh above all else.
In housewares, don’t put anything on the bottom shelf. If it’s really bad, do this with the bottom two shelves.
Front-facing in hard goods is another way to look fuller. How many times have you been at the grocery store and pulled a can of soup out of a beautifully faced shelf to find there wasn’t anything behind it? Front-facing at its finest, it works in thrift too, with a twist.
Something I spotted during the worst of Covid supply chain disruptions was how good traditional retail got at disguising the lack of inventory. Especially at Kohl’s (at least in my neighborhood) aisles got roomier, racks weren’t stuffed, and the clearance racks disappeared. It wasn’t packed, they threaded the needle between spacious and empty looking.
Taking sections out of shelving or rack runs, or reducing the number of circle racks can help. Aisles become wider a store can look roomier. To a point, what that point is is up to interpretation.
The best fix is plenty of goods on the sales floor. If the issue is a lack of donations, focus on that. If there is a chronic issue with staffing, look at your pay and benefits. An engaged, dedicated, well-paid staff may cost more upfront, but the increase in sales will more than makeup for it. More on that in an upcoming post.
Full - Fresh - Organized - Priced Right