In the Trenches

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 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 We didn’t make much on that the low-cost inventory, and keep piece, but it freed up $317 that the shelves as full as possible. If we could use to buy some other some SKUs just aren’t available guitar that would sell quickly. right now (Elixir is making less Call your reps and ask what than 20 SKUs as I write this), pull they’ve got that they can sell you those empty hooks off the wall, to keep the shelves full. If you’re or at least hang a “not available having trouble with the 2019 due to COVID” tag in place of the method of restocking, switch to inventory. That way, to the cus- the 2021 method, which is “Hey, tomer, you’re not out, the product I know you’re still out of the XYZ is just temporarily not available. model I love so much. What else But if every SKU in the store do you have that would work for looks skimpy, you can blame that us?” If all else fails, ask your reps on COVID-19 for only so long. what they would do if they were

Take a walk around the inside in your place and needed invenof your store and look in the tory. The answer might be just corners and look at the base- what you’re looking for. boards. If they need cleaning, Shake things up. My bride get on it. Take one corner, pull and I recently flew to Baltimore everything out, clean every inch on Southwest airlines. This was of carpet/baseboard as if your our first plane trip since COVID mom was coming by to inspect, began, and we weren’t sure how and then put things back in a this would work out for us. To different order. compound matters, the flight

Move things around. Move was 100-percent sold. Every seat drum world to the other side of was filled. Once we were seated the room (it’s easier if you’re a wearing the requisite masks, the five- kit store, and a lot harder if pilot came on over the intercom you’re a 20-kit store, but do it). and greeted us in a thick Scottish Come in while the store is closed brogue. He reminded all us lads if you have to, but move things and lassies to wear our masks, around. You’ll discover some in- and have a nice flight. On the ventory that really needs to leave, return flight, a flight attendant so discount it heavily and get it went over the passenger rules in a new home. Don’t just mark it a very serious tone, and worked down, check the calendar and into his talk the admonition that use the earliest excuse you can all purses, no matter how cute or find to get old inventory gone. expensive, had to be stored under We recently decided to get rid of the seat in front of us. He mena green guitar that had been here tioned that we were in for a very too long, so on St. Patrick’s Day smooth six-and-a-half-hour flight (March 17), we tagged it $317. It (it was a two-hour flight), kidding went on layaway a few days later. (continued on page 45)