Check Your Radar
Warren Shoulberg -- Gifts and Dec, 7/23/2011 5:41:09 AM
Warren Shoulberg
An independent retailer has to keep a lot of things on his or her radar screen: merchandising, operations, finance, personnel, display and just generally staying in business.
Well, sorry, but I'm about to add another radar blip: the competition.
Which is not to say you should be obsessed with competing stores and spend all your time worrying about them. Remember Satchel Page's great quote: "Don't look over your shoulder, something may be gaining on you."
But you can't bury your head in your merchandise either and pretend that there's nobody else out there. More importantly, you probably should be expanding that radar screen to encompass more retailers that are fighting for the same customer you are. Because it's not just other gift specialty stores and it's not just department stores and it's not just the big box retailers you need to be watching.
Here are just three other retailers and channels of distribution you might not think of as competitors... but you should:
1. Close-out stores like Home Goods, Tuesday Morning and Ross. You may think they are just selling excess inventory and odd lots, but increasingly these stores are bringing in new, programmed offerings and as the textiles business suffers through high raw material problems, they are scaling back soft home and increasing the amount of gifts and decorative accessories they carry. They are also terrific indicators of which suppliers are backed up with inventory, a fact you might be able to use in your buying process.
2. Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie. These twins, both under the same ownership, are mostly fashion apparel stores, but they carry a carefully edited selection of gifts and accessories - even a little furniture - that appeals to each of their chosen demographics. With relatively small numbers of stores and accounting for probably less than 10 percent of their sales, the numbers aren't going to be big, but they are very directional in identifying trends and important to shop for what younger customers are looking for.
3. High-end, apparel department stores like Neiman's, Saks and Nordstrom. These retailers are also heavily focused on fashion clothing, but each has a modest home department where the emphasis is on gifts. If you are competing in the better goods part of the marketplace, you need to be shopping these stores if for no other reason than to counter-merchandise your assortments if you are in the same trading area. Maybe too you'll pick up a resource.
Is your radar on?
We would love your feedback!
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