Upping the Ticket

Q: We have lots of customers in our store every day, but our sales just never seem to show an increase. Any ideas?A: If you are maintaining good traffic, but not growing in sales, you may want to look into ways to maximize your average sale per customer.

I once heard this referred to as “upping the ticket.” In other words, increasing the average amount that each customer spends in your store.

There are several things you can do to up the ticket:

• Ask customers if they found everything they were looking for
• Suggest add-on items when appropriate
• As customers enter the store, hand them a coupon offering a discount, or a gift, at a sales total slightly higher than your average sale. Those getting close to the magic figure will often add an additional item to reach it.
• Include some higher priced merchandise in your mix. You may have underestimated how much some customers are prepared to spend.
• Add some luxury items that consumers consider indulgences, such as bath and body products, candy and other “treats” that customers feel they deserve.

Get your staff excited about the idea of increasing your average sale. Start by determining what your average sale is on each day of the week (cash registers and POS systems record the number of transactions, so you simply divide the day's total sales by this number to get the average).

Set up a daily contest to see if you can improve on this figure, remembering to compare with past figures from the same day of the week. Promise to take everyone out for ice cream if you see a small increase, or offer a cash bonus for a large one.

Q: It seems that more and more of our suppliers are using the Internet to market their products directly to the public. Can anything be done about this?

A: Suppliers are as eager as retailers to maximize sales and satisfy customers. Of course, we prefer vendors think of retailers as their customers, rather than consumers. In order to keep retailers happy, many suppliers use their websites only to promote their lines, and do not sell directly to the public. Unfortunately, this can lead to frustrated consumers. Listing the stores carrying the line often doesn't solve this dilemma, because most of us only carry a limited selection of any vendor's merchandise.

This is the main reason suppliers decide to sell direct to the public . The practice does cost us sales, though we can usually outshine a vendor's e-commerce by offering instant gratification and free shipping. Still, the vendor is competing with its retailers, which is not ideal.

There are a few creative solutions to this problem. Enesco allows interested stores to pay a monthly stipend to become Enesco online retailers. Consumer orders are passed along to the closest online retailer, based on the zip code to which it is to be shipped, and the order confirmation form shows the shipping store's key information. The retailer has the option of fulfilling the order from the store's inventory, or having it drop shipped by Enesco. Participating stores get it websites at Enesco.com, fully loaded with more than 2,000 SKUs.

Another intriguing program is called Shopatron (www.shopatron.com). Shopatron partnered with several hundred vendors to handle orders placed through the online catalogues featured on company websites. It accepts orders, processes credit cards and arranges for order fulfillment by retailers in the Shopatron program.

According to Jason Schneider, product development and marketing manager for Gamewright, Web users browsing the company's website can view the full line of games and puzzles, and click a “buy now” button to place a credit card order. A shipping fee is automatically added. Future plans will include a free “local pickup” option.

Once a day, Shopatron sends out an email APB (“all points bulletin”) to participating stores, linking to a website showing orders for the manufacturers they stock. If more than one retailer responds, Shopatron automatically selects the store located closest to the consumer. It then forwards the order and the funds, minus a service charge, to that retailer.

“We've had a great experience with Shopatron,” says Schneider. “It has allowed us to have an e-commerce presence without jeopardizing our partnership with retailers.”

Retailers are also enthusiastic about the Shopatron model, which not only adds Internet orders, but can be a source of new merchandise. Vincent Morgan of Morgan's Big Train Emporium in California now carries 45 toy and gifts brands using Shopatron.

Another plus is that shopkeepers can base their participation on their own schedule. For instance, if the owner is on vacation or at a trade show, the shop simply doesn't respond to the APB for that day.

The geographic matching of Shopatron orders with the closest store encourages shoppers to support independent retailers. Shopatron founder Ed Stevens comes from a tradition of locally owned business — his parents owned a furniture store in Ohio for over 30 years. Although he believes in local stores, he also respects the power of the Internet.

Shopatron started five years ago as his way of marketing radio-controlled airplanes to a wider market through the Web. The program's 300 vendors are still predominantly in the toy, hobby and leisure market, but this approach to e-commerce could be worth investigation by vendors in the gift and home accessories market. There are over 6,000 retailers already participating, getting a share of Internet sales that would not have come to them otherwise.