Holiday Merchandising
There are dozens of ways to generate sterling holiday retail sales, from your overall message to how you display your stocking stuffers and retail gifts.
While I would have to write a book to cover all of them, here are 12 of the most important tips that I’m delighted to share with you, based on my national sales experience and all the expertly merchandised stores that I visit throughout the year.
● Create a theme for the holiday season and share this message throughout your salon. Ideas: “Beauty has universal gift appeal!” “Spread the joy of beauty!”
● Decorate your entire salon, but lavishly adorn your retail section with holiday cheer. Clients are drawn to beautiful, intriguing retail centers and tend to spend more time and money when allowed to shop in a dazzling location. With that said, make sure that your displays serve as fabulous backdrops and your products always take center stage.
● Fun sells. Fill a large jar with candy canes or other holiday goodies and ask clients to guess how many are in the jar. Place the jar in a prominent location within your retail area to instantly create an interactive center. Offer a gift basket as a prize and display it next to the jar.
● Create a hostess and host gift-giving section and call it out as such. Show the gifts, along with loads of them prewrapped. Don’t forget to include a gift tag! Insert an incentive for the recipient to visit your salon.
● Move existing displays around when new merchandise comes in. Since fairly new products will still be selling, switch your displays two weeks after their arrival. Move one from the front to the middle of your retail area and the other from the middle to the back.
● Light your displays to call attention to them. If this isn’t possible, move your displays closer to natural light sources.
● Asymmetrical displays tend to attract more attention than symmetrical ones.
● Color helps to establish a mood and engage clients on an emotional level. The two most compelling retail colors are red and black, which just happen to be Sexy Hair’s colors. Imagine that!
● If you have great windows facing the street, take advantage of this exposure with compelling displays. If you don’t, create ancillary displays (outside your immediate retail area) where traffi c flow is greatest anywhere in your salon.
● Create a “Try Me” area that features your newest styling products that can be applied on dry hair.
● Take pictures of your displays and record the sales results from each one. Hang on to the data so that when the holidays come around next year, you can repeat great successes and avoid those that produced lackluster results.
● Pre-stuff your holiday retail bags with incentives to have clients return in January when things normally slow down.