Welcome to PetEdge  | 
REORDER BY:        

Add Retailing to Your Business

Small businesses such as groomers, small kennels, and small veterinarian offices are often missing a large and profitable source of income—retail! By offering customers a selection of products for resale, you make your business a convenient, one-stop source for pet care and supplies. What better way to entice customers back than to give them a combination of services and retail items in one place, saving them the time and hassle of shopping elsewhere?

So why don’t more businesses add retail
to their list of services?
There are a lot of reasons business owners give for not having retail items available to their clientele, ranging from "I don’t have room" to "I don’t have time" to "I don’t know how." Retail can be a virtually painless way to appreciably increase your income with very little time and effort on your part. Who can say no to that?

If you don’t have room—good!
It’s best to start small anyway. If you are adding the service to an existing business, you probably don’t have the finances to fill up a large space. Small spaces can look well stocked with less merchandise. Nothing looks worse than empty, or sparsely filled shelves.

If you don’t have time—you don’t need much.
Most pet professionals in small businesses have made their reputation and encouraged repeat customers by exhibiting superior customer service. Your customers trust you to have the answers on every subject concerning pet care. Think of the last time a customer asked you a question about training, feeding, housebreaking, grooming, or choosing pet care supplies. Wouldn’t it be nice if you were rewarded for the time it took to answer that question by making a sale of a related product?

If you don’t know how—learn.
A lot of selling retail is common sense coupled with your pet care knowledge. There are plenty of books, videos, articles and other resources available on merchandising and retail. Often manufacturers or distributors will be happy to provide you with advice, just ask.

Retail need not require a large start-up investment. Decide how much money you can invest to begin with, and allow the profits from those sales to replenish your retail stock. If you have $100, purchase that much stock. The markup on retail ranges from 50-100%, so once you have sold that stock, you will have your original $100 to restock what you sold, plus another $50-$100 to buy more. If you continue to reinvest instead of taking the profit, it won’t take long before you have a fully stocked area making extra money for you.

Quite possibly, your most difficult decision will be choosing what retail items to carry. The best and most obvious answer is to go with what you know. What do your customers ask you about the most? Carry products related to that.

The only exception to that rule may be dog food, as pet nutrition is usually the most asked-about subject in the pet care field, and the item that has the least return on investment. The markup is very low, it takes a lot of space to store, and can go bad fairly easily if not stored under specific guidelines. Chances are good that there are other products that would provide much better return for the space used.

Most businesses that stock dog food do so on the assumption that the consumer will purchase other products while in the store. It is a draw. Consider carrying nutritional supplements instead, and leave the dog food to the superstores. If you really want to provide dog food as a courtesy to your customers, there are some very high-quality foods that you can purchase in sufficiently small quantities and order often enough to perhaps make it worthwhile.

Must-have products for the small business are items connected with the services you provide.

Are you a grooming salon?
Stock the shampoos, brushes, combs, and detangling sprays that you use, or that you recommend your customers use. How often does a customer pick up their pet and rave over how good they smell? Carry the cologne and shampoo you used in small sizes for the customer to use at home between visits.

Do you do flea baths?
Make sure you don’t miss those add-on sales of spot-on, flea control products (BioSpot®, Frontline®, Advantage® or Natural Defense™), sprays for the client’s house or other pets, carpet powders, yard sprays, and various types of flea collars. Dogs with dry skin or itching? There are spray-on treatments that alleviate those problems, and here is where the sales of those nutritional supplements come in.

Are you a kennel?
If you include grooming in the services you offer, use all of the above ideas, and add lots of treats. No matter how much customers trust your facility and services, there is still just a little bit of guilt involved for most clients in leaving their beloved pet in someone else’s care. Make sure you have lots of yummy goodies and toys for clients to impulsively purchase to alleviate that! Don’t forget training items, collars, leads, books and videos.

A veterinarian has many tie-ins to use, including everything the groomer or kennel might offer, plus more health-oriented products and a wider range of flea prevention products. Veterinarians can offer many products that are sold only to veterinarians, which is a great marketing tool for them.

Don’t fall into the trap of trying to offer everything that anyone might want. You will quickly run out of room. Instead of trying to compete with much larger stores, be different. Instead of stocking the collars and leads that you see elsewhere, have unique offerings in only a few styles. Remember, you have to stock a wide range of sizes, so save space for them.

Think of who your customers are to help you choose both styles and sizes. If you are in a rural area and most of your clientele own hunting dogs, those adorable fancy collars with rhinestones probably won’t sell. Most of your sizes should be for the hunting dog crowd, not smaller sizes best suited to lap dogs. Be willing to special order items that you don’t have on hand, but make sure to inform customers that their order may take a few weeks. Requesting a small non-refundable deposit from customers will ensure that you are not stuck with non-returnable, one-of-a-kind items should the customers change their mind about specially ordered items.

The best way to determine what to carry?
Ask your customers. Post a sign asking what they would like to see you have available, with paper, pen, and a depository for answers displayed within easy access.

Where to put the items you sell is another consideration that can make or break your retail section. Put some careful thought into this. Whenever you go into a retail, department, or grocery store, take a look at how items are displayed and where they are placed. Notice how the milk, juice, and meats (staples that most people always purchase) are at the back of the grocery store? This allows the store to control your movement, making sure you go past all the other expensive things they want you to buy.

Follow the same principles, even if it is someone’s eyes you are moving, not their feet. Most people are right-handed, and therefore both move and look to the right first when entering an area. Most people look first at eye level, then at the shelf above, and down last. So, stock your highest markup items at eye level, and make sure your largest sizes of an item are stocked to the right of the smaller ones. Remember to put your bestsellers at the back!

For more ideas, look at displays that are used everywhere you go. Notice how much more merchandise the average department store jewelry counter can fit into a tiny area using turning counter displays. Ask your distributor, or the manufacturer of an item, if displays are available when you purchase a certain amount of product.

Some distributors also carry a selection of specialty racks, counter-top displays, and bins. Who can resist the bargain feel of full bins of products such as toys? You just have to paw through it. Once a customer has picked something up, they are more likely to purchase it, so make your displays user-friendly.

What attracts your eye when you are in a store?
Use those ideas in your store. What annoys you? Avoid it. A few common dissatisfiers are: no prices on product, price tags covering ingredients, and not being able to reach upper shelf items. In regards to price tags, many states require items to be priced individually rather than having them on a shelf above a tag. There are two good places to put the tags. One is to put the tags prominently where they can be seen. Another is to put them on the back so that the customer must pick the item up to see the price. Although it is true that handling an item increases the chance it will be bought, it is also true that pricing that way causes a lot of shelf straightening.

Change your displays often.
When a customer has seen the exact same thing a couple of times, they stop looking at it. Keep it fresh and interesting just by changing where things are placed. Keep displays full without being cluttered or busy looking. And dust, dust, dust! Product with dust on it looks old, even if your building produced that dust in just two days. Be cautious about what you put in direct sunlight. Labels fade and look tired and unappealing. If you have lots of windows and natural light, consider covering windows with UV blocking film or even shades for the retail area.

Make sure that all employees know the benefits and features of all the items that you sell.
Most customers want the best for their pet, and will pay a little more at your store where they can get knowledgeable information. Make sure your employees want to sell the products. Incentive programs can work well, perhaps keep track of the dollar amount of retail that an employee has sold throughout a month and give them a bonus based on that total.

Record keeping can be tedious, so make sure you set it up from the beginning so that it is painless to do.
There are lots of software programs out there that can be hooked up to your cash register and will automatically record sales and keep inventory for you. Or, it can be as simple as keeping a list by the cash box of what you sold today, and deducting it from a monthly master list, allowing you to see at a glance when something has sold well and needs to be replenished. It should be equally easy to determine your sales figures for tax purposes. Consult your accountant for the best ways to do this.

It will take some time and thought to set up an effective retail area. However, once people are used to making purchases from you, retailing will provide you with a practically effort-free source of extra income, as well as providing your customers with a personalized service that they need.