Hey, everybody, it’s Bob. And in this episode of Real Retail TV you’re going to learn about 6 holiday margin builders. You don’t need to be told about the importance of the holidays to your overall, you know, yearly sales and profit goals. But when I talk to retailers, often margins are sort of, uh, an afterthought. Sales is the number that really makes people excited and, uh, every, uh, at the end of every month, Uh, in our WhizBang! retailers Facebook group, I ask, how are sales? I don’t ask, how are margins, but really when you start to think about, you know, your profit picture, your margins are an absolute, an absolutely critical number. So the holidays are a great opportunity for you to really build your sales and your margins, and that’s what we’re gonna talk about here today. So the first thing I’m gonna talk about is this idea of intentionality that I’m encouraging you to be mindful, to be proactive, to be intentional about really maintaining strong margins throughout the holidays. So what are the six ways to do it? Number 1 is pricing properly. Uh, this is the lowest of all the low-hanging fruit when it comes to sales and, uh, and profits, margins. So if you don’t know the three rules of profitable retail pricing, go to our website, Wizbanktraining.com, and on the homepage, there is a video from the Retail Mastery System. That really talks about how you price correctly for maximum impact. So that’s the first tip. The second tip is to find high margin items. When you go to the trade show, when we talk about intentionality, it’s the idea that you’re Always looking for high margin items, the inexperienced shopper looks for the things that they think are coolest and believe me, been there, done that, know this whole situation, but as you become more savvy as a merchant. You want the cool items, you want the items that will really appeal to your ideal customer, but margin becomes an incredibly important part of your buying decision. So you wanna find high margin items. One of the reasons that I like to recommend our clients not stay away from, but don’t overemphasize well-known brands is because people shop price on well-known brands. When you find the new makers, the new, uh, you know, those people who are just starting out in business, the brands that aren’t so well-known. They’re a lot less susceptible to price shopping, so find merchandise that has great margins. The third margin building tip is to shop, to be incredibly proactive about shopping closeouts. It took me about 10 years to finally really figure this out, but there’s this idea that your, your vendors make mistakes just like you do. That they thought that hot pink was gonna be the color this year and it turns out it’s baby blue and they’ve got a warehouse of hot pink. So they have to, in order to keep their cash flowing, they have to do exactly like you do. They do closeouts. So I want you to, I’m encouraging you to be incredibly proactive about shopping for closeouts. Uh, I was talking to a friend who has a retail store here in West Michigan. And his brother is, you know, his brother’s his partner and his brother is the guy who is always on the vendor website, always. I mean, that’s what he does, one of the things he loves to do is to find the bargains. So recognize there’s a difference between buying high margin items. And buying closeouts, but both of those are great ways to maintain your margins. And so this is an important caveat here when you buy at closeout, you don’t have to pass the discount along, assuming that the item had value in the first place, that it was what it, you know, that it was worth uh suggested retail price. You don’t have to mark it down. You can mark it down, but you can also keep it at full price and just make, make better margins. So that’s the third thing. So now let’s talk about how, now that you’ve found these high margin items and priced them correctly, how do you sell them? The 4th margin building tip is to sell more of those high margin items by displaying them correctly. You know, every store has its what I call hot spots. At the Mackinac Kite Company, at our old store in Mackinac City, there was one spot on the ceiling. That any kite you put there sold like crazy, right? I mean, it was when you came into the store, it was right there to the right. People came into the store, they looked up on the ceiling because we had all the kites displayed there and they saw it and you know, and so what did we do? We put an expensive kite there. We put a white bird double French military there and that kite sold like crazy. If we would’ve had a $30 kite there. The $30 kite would have sold, but we had an $80 kite there, so the $80 kite sold. So what I’m suggesting is understand the traffic patterns and the buying patterns in your store and put those high margin items strategically so that you sell more of them. The 2nd thing, uh, or the 5th thing, the 2nd way to sell these high margin items is to, uh, demonstrate, uh, impulse items. Impulse items tend to be high margin items. Uh, I, you know, if you have the retail mastery system or if you’ve seen me live, you’ve probably heard me talk about whistling balloon helicopters. It’s a silly toy. That I’ve literally, Susan contends that I’ve sold tens of thousands of them, you know, you blew it up, there was a balloon, you put the 3 rotors on the top and then you let it go and it fly up in the air, right. Uh, we bought them for 65 cents, sold them for $1.99 because I would demonstrate them at the counter, literally, I mean, they would fly out the door. So if you have a great impulse item that is that lends itself to demonstration, I’m suggesting that you make, especially if it’s something that you can have at the counter, I’m suggesting that it should be a non-negotiable standard that every single customer is shown this. Item or some item. So going back to this whole idea of impulse items tend to be high margin items, make it a non-negotiable standard that those impulse items are being demonstrated all the time on your floor during the holidays. And the final tip, the 6th tip, the 3rd tip on how to sell it is bundles. Bundles are a great way. To increase your margins, particularly if you take those closeouts and you build them with, uh, you build your bundles with closeouts because let’s just think about this for a second. Let’s say there is a, a widget that, uh, would, that you would have bought for 10 and you would have sold it for, uh, 1999, 1920. And you were able to buy them at 5, the value of that item is still $20 right? That is the manufactured recommended price, MSRP. So, but you don’t need to say, I got this for less money, therefore this bundle is less. No, bundles do not have to be discounted. The value of the bundle comes from the fact that it’s a cool bundle. So when you take bundles and you, uh, make these high margin items part of your bundles, you, it’s a, it’s just a wonderful, wonderful way for you to build your margins during the holidays. One final tip about bundles that’s so important. is when you have bundles built around a, a theme, you know, uh, Sundays at the spa or, you know, relaxation package for her or something like that. When you create those bundles, always have good, better, best. Have 3 price points in a particular themed bundle, because what you’re going to find by having 3 price points, the average sale from this theme of bundles goes up because it’s called the Goldilocks syndrome, right? The cheapest bundle, people don’t tend to buy the cheapest bundle, they don’t tend to buy. The most expensive bundle, they tend to buy the middle bundle. Why? Because it’s like Goldilocks. It’s not too hard, it’s not too soft, it’s just right. So this is another one of those pricing strategies that can make you an enormous amount of money. So, there it is, 6 ways for you to build your margins this holidays. I’ll see you next week. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.