Savvy small business owners are constantly on the lookout for ways to maximize sales and bring in more customers. This inevitably means adjusting your product offerings from time to time to cash in on specific trends or seasonal product lines. When children and college students make their return to school, they are often in a rush to conquer everything on their shopping list, hopping from store to store in hopes of finding the best bargains. For opportunistic business people, this offers the ideal opportunity to leverage this trend by offering a variety of back-to-school supplies.
Sell School Supplies that Are Relevant to Your Niche
It’s not just convenience stores and supermarkets that can cash in on back-to-school spending. A variety of retail stores can benefit from stocking school supplies, enabling you to increase spending among customers. A clothing store, for example, can offer backpacks and accessories. A hardware store can offer notebooks and pens. A computer store can sell scientific calculators and refurbished electronics for students. With about 74 million school-aged children and about 20 million college students, businesses can expect to sell a lot of goods by preparing their stores with back-to-school necessities.
When Should Businesses Start Stocking Supplies?
It’s never too early to start stocking your store for back-to-school shopping. While many students and parents wait until the final weeks of summer to conduct their school shopping, others try to beat the rush by purchasing school supplies early. The sooner you begin stocking your shelves, the more products you can sell throughout summer.
Where Should You Position the School Supplies in Your Store?
Most business owners know that location is everything. However, this doesn’t only apply to the location of your store. It also pertains to your product positioning. If you’re a store that’s generally known for selling school supplies, like a grocery store or convenience store, then store positioning isn’t as important.
However, for retail stores that don’t ordinarily offer school supplies, you need to choose the positioning of items carefully to ensure they’re visible and obvious to shoppers. For smaller items, like pens and notebooks, you can position them right near the checkout. Having temporary displays positioned in the middle of your store, toward the front entrance, or in another highly visible location, will ensure your customers spot your back-to-school supplies immediately, thus increasing their likelihood to make a purchase.
Where Should Businesses Purchase Supplies?
The key to fully leveraging the back-to-school rush is by purchasing back-to-school supplies wisely. You need to buy in quantities that are proportionate to projected sales, you need to find an array of high-quality merchandise, and you need to access the greatest savings so you can turn a larger profit. All of this stems from the wholesale supplier you partner with. With the right supplier, you’ll be able to find bulk packages that fit the needs of your business, while accessing low prices that enable you to set a healthy profit margin.
No matter the type of retail store you operate, you can expect to sell more products by offering some back-to-school supplies. The supplies you sell should be in some way relevant to your niche, and they should be displayed in an obvious way, so shoppers are immediately aware of them. Click here to browse a vast selection of back-to-school merchandise at low wholesale prices and in packages that fit your needs.