Company Stores
Today, I am going to give you a run down of what used to be somewhat of a thorn in my side – online company stores. It has been coming up more and more for me recently among my clients, which has provided me with many learning opportunities to make them MUCH less thorn-in-sideish. In no particular order, here are the 5 most valuable lessons I’ve learned:
- Start small. A lot of customers try to please every person purchasing right off of the bat. That’s not the way to do it. Offer the basics and provide opportunities for suggestions on what people want to see. Look at the provided reports to see what is popular and go from there as the store progresses.
- Find ways to generate “newness” to the store. Whether it’s running specials, using store gift cards as rewards to employees, or flash sales, keep it at the top of their mind. Add new products quarterly. The whole goal of most company stores is to get people wearing the brand to generate awareness in the public – all while being very easy for all involved parties.
- Mix in a bit of retail geared apparel to go with the normal corporate gear. Make sure you provide options that people will WANT to wear. The promotional industry has become much better at staying on trend with available clothing, and our team at PS has done our part by staying current with design and imprint trends. If you provide options people really like to wear, it ups the chances of them wearing the apparel on the weekends or evenings, therefore getting your brand out even more.
- Company stores really are a good thing. Some of my first experiences with online stores in my current position weren’t all that positive. They are a bigger undertaking than I took into consideration and I wasn’t armed with the correct information to pull them off smoothly. After a big learning curve, I now understand that each store is going to be a totally different animal and can’t be approached the same. Now that I know that, it’s much easier to find the perfect, achievable, customizable solution for each customer.
- Trust your promotional experts. (Hopefully that’s us!) We want the store to be just as successful as you do. We want to make it easy for everyone involved. Be open with us, make sure you have a clear goal in mind for what you want your store to accomplish and let us guide you from there. After all, they pay us to do it, so we’ve got to be good at it, right? Just like the weatherman. Wait. That’s not a good analogy. I’ll get back to you…
If this is something you want to learn more about, please feel free to give us a call soon. We’d love to sit down and learn about your business and figure out how a store could ease someone’s work load and get your logo on your employees with minimal cost and work for you.- Shannon Kirby