How to drive retail success over winter

As the nights begin to close in and winter quickly approaches, the world of craft takes on new, festive heights. The Christmas period is undoubtedly the most exciting time of the year for the crafting community - filled with handmade cards, gifts, decorations, wrapping and much much more. This drastic surge in popularity proves a fantastic opportunity for retail shops and craft centres to capitalise on the increased seasonal demand.

Though the difficulty is, how do you ensure that you make the most of this opportunity and capture a portion of the market? Not only this, but in offering a diverse product range that caters to all their Christmas crafting needs, how do you ensure peace of mind that you’ll sell through the stock in time for the new year?

It’s a thought I’m sure keeps most of you up at night!

To help you make this festive season the best yet, I wanted to share a few strategies you can employ to really boost your success, sell through product and spread the joy of seasonal crafting.

Understanding your customers, and the activities they enjoy

Customer-centricity is key to your success. Understanding who your customers are, their likes, hobbies and interests will really help you to devise a product offering that caters to them specifically. And, finding this information out is usually a lot easier than you would first imagine. A simple, informal chat with a few of your customers in person will uncover a wealth of interesting and often vital insight that will help you make the best, most informed business decisions.

Putting your customers at the heart of everything you do ensures all subsequent business decisions will be to their benefit… and as a result, yours!

Know what’s trending

Tracking the market is easier said than done. As soon as something is trendy, something else has already taken its spot. With trends changing at the light speed, knowing what’s on-trend, and even what’s coming into trend can be a full-time job in itself. Being active and engaged on platforms where your customers are is a quick route to knowing what’s hot and what’s not.

If your customers are active on a certain social media platform, you can join the conversation, helping you to gain vital insight in to what activities they’re currently enjoying, what they want to try their hand at and equally, the activities they’re not engaging in.

Understanding this will help you provide a product offering that is suited to the needs of your customers – driving repeat footfall and furthering the evangelism for your business.

Host workshops and events

I’ve no doubt you’ve read about the benefits of hosting workshops. As well as stocking products that your customers love, opening your doors to workshops and events is a great way to drive continued footfall. This also provides a fantastic opportunity to push sales of the product you’re demonstrating as it enables you to show the product in context, and how it may be best used – inspiring your customers.

Whether it be a session on how to give their gift wrapping the wow factor, or an in-store competition to see who can create the best Christmas card, being engaged with your customers and helping them on their journey will position you as a leader, driving positive word-of-mouth and increasing the local awareness of your shop.

Create beautiful displays

With 70-74% of in-store purchases being the result of impulse (displaymode.co.uk), creating beautifully engaging displays will contribute to a sharp boost in product sales over the festive period.

Though having a huge range of products from a plethora of brands, in different shapes and a rainbow of colours can make your job of merchandising 10x harder, and ultimately, negatively impact your sales. Perhaps you’ve even considered reducing your product range or consolidating the brands you offer to ensure a unified display. A sacrifice, often or not, you don’t need to make!

With research and development at the heart of our in-house product team, our Christmas range has been designed to not only capture the attention of your shoppers with beautiful festive packaging, but our industry expertise and consumer knowledge helps you to remain a step ahead of the latest trends, and the competition.

With festive products spanning across your favourite brands such as Create Christmas, Simply Make and Xcut, you can easily create stunning displays without compromising your product offering. Being your single destination for the most acclaimed brands in the industry, we can help you fill your stocking with every product you need for success this Christmas period. Meaning it’s easy as (mince) pie to get everything ticked off your Christmas wish list.

To find out more about our fabulous Christmas range and how you can really take of this holiday season (with a sleigh full of goodies), you can talk to one of our team on 01303 297888, or visit our website at shop.westdesignproducts.co.uk.