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The Gifted Retailer

GDA Staff -- Gifts and Dec, 4/4/2011 12:03:47 PM

More is more for Gyan Galoob, owner of The Candy Basket in Norman, OK. She and her husband Maurice, shown here, make sure the shelves are fully stocked to keep customers coming back for more.

Gifts & Decorative Accessories: What do you like best about being a retailer? The Candy Basket
Gyan Galoob: The entertainment aspect. From finding products to creating aesthetically pleasing displays (lights, camera), to interacting with the customers (action), then selling the product (bows), I love the whole process, from start to finish.

G&DA: What was the most valuable piece of business advice that you ever received?
GG: That empty space was expensive real estate. I know a lot of merchants think 'less is more', but I think 'more is more', and I like fully stocked shelves with plenty of eye candy, as well as plenty of real candy! You can't sell from an empty wagon, and although it might look cleaner and more modern to have fewer items on a shelf, the minimal look is not for me, at least not in our shop. I love it when a customer says every time they turn around they see something new!

G&DA: What is/was your most successful promotion?
The Candy Basket GG: Triskaidekamania sales. Every Friday, the 13th, we have a half price sale! The only exception is if it's in February, as Valentine's Day trumps everything in our store. That's the biggest day of our year, and there's no way we'll have a sale on the 13th of February. We remove brand new items, or anything we don't want to be sold at a discount, and are training our customers to think of Friday the 13th as their LUCKY day. We used to run it for Friday and Saturday, but found we got better results if we stressed the urgency of a one day only sale.

G&DA: What three products/lines are you best sellers?
GG: Of course, chocolates and candies. However, for gifts and other merchandise, Two's Company, Ganz, and fun/funky products are strong sellers for us.
Two's Company has large minimums, but there's a lot of room for good mark-ups if you buy the right products.
Ganz has what I affectionately refer to as 'truck stop trash', but also has wonderful products that will allow a good mark-up. Again, you have to spend some time looking through a huge variety of products to find ones that will fit well and be steady sellers.
We love and promote whimsy, so fun and funky items are popular with our customers. We especially like the odd items from companies like Blue Q, Accoutrements, Mud Pie, Our Name is Mud and Silvestri.

G&DA: What are you doing to attract new customers? The Candy Basket
GG: Social networking - it's free! We post almost daily on Facebook, tweet occasionally on Twitter, and encourage all customers to sign up for our "Candygrams", which are email newsletters I send out about three times every two months. I'm an old dog and I need to learn some new tricks!

G&DA: What was your most effective display?
GG: Back when pink/brown first became popular, we bought into the whole bride/bridesmaid pink/brown look from Mud Pie. It really was beautiful, and we put it all out on a big dining table smack dab in front of the front door. When customers came in, they had to see it, and it sold very well. We had a lot of pink items already, plus trunks, boxes, etc. that were wood tones, and together, it all looked beautiful. We sold through a number of those items fairly quickly, and reordered several times.

G&DA: How do you find your best employees?
The Candy Basket GG: That's a toughie. I usually have a 'feel' for the right person, and I've been known to talk up the store to waiters, clerks at other stores, or customers. Our first wonderful employee was originally a customer who was new in town. She was with us for over 13 years. Our current manager is a gal I've known since she went to high school with one of our sons. She's like a daughter to me, and she can listen to me visualize, then create exactly what I had in mind, just like she had crawled inside my head! It's wonderful! Other employees are gals/guys who just had a certain something that I liked - a little sparkle or creative streak. It doesn't hurt that most of our better employees over the years have either been actors or musicians as we are!

G&DA: What was your biggest retail problem and how did you solve it?
GG: To me, the biggest problem has been the economy. Things will never be the way they were in 2006/2007 for us. We've grown from an original 850 square foot store to 2,650 square feet, and until a few years ago, we saw double digit increases every year. Now things appear to be inching their way back up again, but I'm afraid we're all going to have to accept that there's a new normal, and we're going to have to continue to cut expenses where we can, buy products that will allow for better margins, and keep our fingers on the pulse of the gift industry.

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