I N T H E T RENCHE S
Shake Things Up
By Allen McBroom It’s time to shake things up. If you’re a retailer, you know we’re no longer living in the “need it, order it, get it” world of 2019. That cozy world has been replaced with the “need it, who has it, who do I bribe to get it” world of 2021. The promotional events we held in the past are either forbidden by government edict or unlikely to draw real numbers due to folks’ desire to avoid crowds. Our familiar customer base is now alternately strapped for cash due to lower work hours and no place to gig, or completely flush with money due to various government stimulus checks and reduced spending on dining out and entertainment. The really frustrating part for smaller retailers is the new problem of having customers walk in, flush with cash, but not having the inventory they’re wanting to buy. Grrrrrrrrr. Online sales are up, too, but delivery delays are causing us 32
to spend more time than usual holding the buyers’ hands and assuring them the items will eventually arrive. In other words, we’re working in a retail world that doesn’t know up from down, or right from left, and it’s beyond tiring. Rather than fret over the absence of the world as we once knew it, let’s spend our time and energies on making the world we’ve been handed a better place to live and work. Let’s start by looking at promotional events. Getting your name out front and center at someone else’s venue is easy to do, and relatively inexpensive. We recently began sponsoring an Open Mic Night at a local tavern. “Sponsoring” means we get to hang a banner with our logo on the stage, we help promote the night on social media, and we pay the night’s master of ceremonies. Sponsoring someone else’s event means you don’t have to worry about social distancing, masks, air exchange or anything else related to having a safe gathering. The people who see the banner came for music, and the musicians playing the show are getting to gig, and that’s the perfect place for us (or you) to be involved. When you order accessories, order deeper than usual, and reorder earlier than usual. Accessories like strings and sticks seem to be easier to get than serialized instruments, and they are certainly bought more often, so make sure you don’t run out.
Heck, don’t even run low. Bulk up the low-cost inventory, and keep the shelves as full as possible. If some SKUs just aren’t available right now (Elixir is making less than 20 SKUs as I write this), pull those empty hooks off the wall, or at least hang a “not available due to COVID” tag in place of the inventory. That way, to the customer, you’re not out, the product is just temporarily not available. But if every SKU in the store looks skimpy, you can blame that on COVID-19 for only so long. Take a walk around the inside of your store and look in the corners and look at the baseboards. If they need cleaning, get on it. Take one corner, pull ever ything out, clean ever y inch of carpet/baseboard as if your mom was coming by to inspect, and then put things back in a different order. Move things around. Move drum world to the other side of the room (it’s easier if you’re a five- kit store, and a lot harder if you’re a 20-kit store, but do it). Come in while the store is closed if you have to, but move things around. You’ll discover some inventory that really needs to leave, so discount it heavily and get it a new home. Don’t just mark it down, check the calendar and use the earliest excuse you can find to get old inventory gone. We recently decided to get rid of a green guitar that had been here too long, so on St. Patrick’s Day (March 17), we tagged it $317. It went on layaway a few days later.
We didn’t make much on that piece, but it freed up $317 that we could use to buy some other guitar that would sell quickly. Call your reps and ask what they’ve got that they can sell you to keep the shelves full. If you’re having trouble with the 2019 method of restocking, switch to the 2021 method, which is “Hey, I know you’re still out of the XYZ model I love so much. What else do you have that would work for us?” If all else fails, ask your reps what they would do if they were in your place and needed inventory. The answer might be just what you’re looking for. Shake things up. My bride and I recently flew to Baltimore on Southwest airlines. This was our first plane trip since COVID began, and we weren’t sure how this would work out for us. To compound matters, the flight was 100-percent sold. Every seat was filled. Once we were seated wearing the requisite masks, the pilot came on over the intercom and greeted us in a thick Scottish brogue. He reminded all us lads and lassies to wear our masks, and have a nice flight. On the return flight, a flight attendant went over the passenger rules in a very serious tone, and worked into his talk the admonition that all purses, no matter how cute or expensive, had to be stored under the seat in front of us. He mentioned that we were in for a very smooth six-and-a-half-hour flight (it was a two-hour flight), kidding (continued on page 45) MAY 2021
