What promotions are you planning to kick off the new year at your store?

Sandra Allison, Allison Wonderland, Cape May, NJ

We're adding a winter issue to our newsletter so that it comes out quarterly. Also, January is National Hot Tea month, so I'm doing a series of tea tastings and lectures on tea and health. I'll offer them in conjunction with bed and breakfast inns in our town. One inn is offering a gourmet weekend featuring several other guest speakers and me. We're also planning book signings and periodic in-house teas, where we serve tea, scones, trifle, and sandwiches. It's a nice way to drum up business in January, February, and March, which is the off season for a resort area like ours.

Our birthday celebration will be in April. We serve cake and have a gift bag giveaway with simple prizes worth a dollar or two and one really nice prize. Anyone who makes a purchase gets to pull a free gift out of the bag.

Irv Losman, Tiara Galleries & Gifts, Rockville, MD

It's my contention that you'd better step up to the plate swinging. You must be visible immediately after the holidays. In terms of actual events, in which we're so expert, a lot of the planning doesn't occur till December or even early January. Direct mail will again be emphasized dramatically. Information and announcements of new introductions in all the lines is a definite priority. New product unveilings will be done with a lot of flair. We will then correlate the direct mail with in-store events, spiced with food and music. For example, we're doing a fashion day with models showing off the new Swarovski jewelry, as well as a special introduction of its new club series.

Overall, we're going to do a lot to keep our name in front of our customers, and create a lot of small events, using them as a focal point for our advertising.

Suellen Metke, Grand Heron, Aberdeen, WA

We're pretty light in first quarter. It's not a big deal at our store because of the wet and cold weather in our part of the country. I'll be putting up special window displays for Valentine's Day and Easter, and maybe hold a drawing. Normally I don't plan for first quarter until after Christmas, because our fourth quarter is so big that we can hardly handle it. It's so much work because we have our Christmas open house. We close down for several days to get ready for it and we redo the whole store. However, we didn't know what to expect this year, because after September 11 our business dropped to just about nothing. But we held our open house from November 3 to 5, people came back to the store, and it was a success. It was even better than last year.

Jim Zimmerman, Cottura, Los Angeles, CA

Primarly, we're planning a tie–in promotion with our holiday sales. We have a big December promotion during which we give away what we call "Cottura Cash." It is basically a $10 discount for every $50 spent. By handing out Cottura Cash to customers shopping with us in December, we encourage them to come back in January and February, when the Cottura Cash can be redeemed.

We're also going to take a look at the retail climate in January and see what the story is. If it's the same as it is today, we will add more promotions.

After that, we have a big warehouse sale in March, and we focus a lot of our energies on that. We send out invitations to more than 50,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area.