Hey. It’s Bob Negen, and welcome to another episode of Real Retail TV. Today, I’m going to share with you ten, count them, ten ways that you can start to strategically bring your inventory levels down before the end of the year.

It is really important that you bring your inventory levels down as low as possible by the end of the year. One reason is you want cash.

You have a lot of inventory. If you need to bring those levels down, bring them down, turn that excess inventory into cash. Cash is king. So now is the time to begin starting to sell down, turn that merchandise into cash. You also want to sell it now because you don’t want to count it, you know, in the beginning of the new year. Counting your inventory is a pain in the neck.

But the less you have, not but, but, of course, the less you have, the easier it is to count. But perhaps the most important reason to get your inventory levels down is so that you don’t have to pay taxes on that level. You know, you said this drove me crazy that every year I would get a tax bill from my accountant, and it said I owed a lot of money on profits that I had made, but I never had any cash. And what I learned was my cash was sitting on my shelves.

So you want to get that number as low as possible by the end of the year to lower your tax burden. So those are reasons to be incredibly proactive about bringing your inventory levels down right now. So now what I’m gonna share with you as promised, ten ways to bring it down now before you even get to your store wide clearance sale. You see, it’s easier to sell it now at no discount or with a little discount, maybe twenty percent, then it is going to be able to sell it after the new year at fifty percent.
So now’s the time to start thinking about it. Now’s the time to start doing something about it. The first five ways I’m gonna share with you are great because you don’t even have to put a discount with it. This is these are ways to sell down right now by being intentional, not by associating a discount with it.

So the first is to put it into bundles. Put that merchandise that you’re overstocked. Put it into bundles.

For several years, our landlord here in downtown Grand Haven, was a a hundred year old grocery store, and they had a tremendous corporate gift basket business. And, of course, I got to know everybody, including Rita, who, you know, built the baskets in the basement. And what she would do was she would, every day, find out where they were overstocked, and she would incorporate that merchandise into the baskets, into the bundles.

So by being proactive, by looking and seeing where you need to reduce, you can put that merchandise into bundles, sell it without a discount.

The second way to, sell merchandise, start to sell proactively sell down without having a discount is to remerchandise your store.

You know, in every store, there is a magic spot, a hot spot. At the original Mackinac Kite Company in Mackinac City, that magic spot was on the ceiling just to the right of the door. People would walk into the store. They would be in a kite shop. Their eyes would automatically be drawn to the ceiling because we had all these beautiful kites hanging from the ceiling, and the front right was where they would look first.

Oh my goodness. Anything we put in that spot would sell. What we ended up doing was putting a little better than average kite in that spot, a double French military kite from Whitebird Kites because it increased the average ticket, and we knew we’d sell a lot of them in that spot. So find the spot. Think about what’s the magic spot in your store and put the merchandise you need to move, put it in that spot.

The third way to start to proactively move merchandising merchandise without discounting is feature it with signage. You know, when you sign something, it sells more.

So write good signage and put it on the merchandise you want to move. Talk about the benefits.

Talk about who would be a great gift recipient for that piece of merchandise. But when you sign it, you sell it. So sign it now, move it now, and you won’t have to discount it later.

The fourth way to move your merchandise without discounting it is to show it. You know? Again, once you start to proactively determine what needs to go, you can proactively show that merchandise.

Now, of course, you always want anything you sell to be the right fit for the customer. You want it to be a perfect purchase.

But when you focus on when you are aware of what you’re trying to move, you will automatically steer your customers who who will benefit, who will who will like that merchandise into that merchandise. Not just you, but get your team to sort of team to sort of understand where you’re overstocked and ask them to be aware and to sell it when it’s correct, when it’s appropriate. And the fifth way to, sell merchandise to sell down without discounting is with your social selling. If you do Facebook live or, Instagram live, feature the stuff you need to move.

That’s the stuff that people will buy. So when you feature that merchandise, it will sell. And, you know, again, if you’re not doing social selling yet, I would encourage you to get on that bandwagon. It is part of this omni experiential future that I’ve been talking about a lot. Okay. So those are five ways without discounting. Now let’s talk about five ways with discounting.

Number one, have a clearance table. When Susan first came to work for the Mackinac kite company, the first thing she did was create a clearance table. You know, Paul Erickson, I was recently on a, webinar, panel for an m one, management one webinar. And Paul Erickson. One of the management, one team was, giving his presentation.
And he said something that was just perfect. He said, extra inventory is like rat poison for a store and you want to get rid of the rat poison. So if you can’t sell it the way that I’ve just described, mark it down, put it on a clearance table and you will watch it turn into cash. There are people who just love to shop your clearance table.

Second way is to have a clearance section.

You know, if you have I mean, I don’t know your business. I don’t know how your holiday’s going. I don’t know how your stock levels are. But if a table isn’t enough, have a whole section. Now is the time to start getting rid of it. Mark it down, put it in your clearance section, and get rid of it. It may be that you have to mark it down and keep it as on in its original place in the store, but get rid of it.
The eighth way is signage. I talked about, oh, the sun all of a sudden. I talked about the importance or how signage sells. If you’re just trying to move something, if you signage sells when you mark something down.

Same thing. You wanna talk about benefits. You wanna talk about who is the perfect recipient for this merchandise if it’s a gift. You wanna talk about the discounts, but signage sells.

Mark it down. Sign it correctly. Watch it move.

Social media live. So we talked about, having you know, if you’re doing social selling, you can have a whole show, which is just clearance, or you can do your regular show and throw in a couple of clearance items just to make it fun and interesting. But you can put that merchandise into your social selling, into your into your show. And then the final thing that I wanna share with you is you can create a special Facebook outlet group.

Think of it as an outlet store, but for your store without having to have a store. So this is a, a closed group. It is not a page that is open to every any anybody. People have to ask to join, but this is where you can put your clearance items.
We have lots and lots of clients who are doing these, groups, and they’re having tremendous, tremendous success with them. It’s another great way for you to clear your merchandise. And you can use that Facebook clearance group. That is a year round effort.

It’s a year round another experience, another way that you can use to, you know, get new customers to sell your overstocks and to build your sales. So there it is. Ten ways. Ten ways in ten minutes for you to start selling your merchandise before you get to the end of the year.

Now having said that, I do want to encourage you to recognize that these are just ways that you can sell down before your clearance sale.

You also should have a clearance sale. Unless your inventory levels are spot on, have a clearance sale. Mark that stuff down.

Get rid of it. Turn it into cash. But, the purpose of this episode of Real Retail TV was to give you some ideas to proactively sell down before you get to that store wide clearance sale. So if you have any ways that you use that I haven’t shared here, put them down in the comments below. I always love to hear from you. I’m Bob Nagan, and we’ll see you next week.