Category: Retail

So, how DO you close a retail store? That seems to be a common question among retailers these days with the economy in a tailspin, but the more important question is this: “How do you close a retail store PROFITABLY?”

And that is a question that doesn’t seem to get one good answer. Well, for most independent retailers, if the economy has really beaten you down and you haven’t been able to establish any sort of marketing plan to accommodate for the economy, then closing your business is definitely the best answer to your woes.

With the question being simple in context, the answer is somewhat complex, but this is an area of consulting I’ve been doing for quite a while now, so I’ll lay it on the line with you.

First, do your research. I’ve never been one to candy coat anything for anyone. I tell it like it is.& So, go to Google, Yahoo, or your search engine of choice and search on any term(s) you can think of pertaining to this topic. There you will find plenty of companies and consultants that provide this service. This is where the fun begins.

Just like any other service provider you would seek out, you’re not going to hire the first one you contact regardless of what they say or how good they seem, which is why I always tell people that contact our offices, “Call all the other guys first, THEN get back with me”. This may seem pompous to some and maybe even stupid to others, but the reason I do this is because I know that, A.) I won’t work with everyone, and B.) No one else in the market place offers what we do. There, I said it.

So, back to the question at hand: How to close a retail store. It all centers around a solid marketing system. Well, unless you are wanting to close your business because of old age, retirement, divorce, death in the family, or any other reason NOT related to poor sales and slumping economy, then you may not know exactly what a solid marketing system means, otherwise, you probably would not be wanting to know how to close a retail store in the first place. Make sense?

Any and all successful businesses revolve around one simple, yet complex, principle: solid marketing systems or what I like to call the Retail Marketing Triangle: Marketing, Merchandising, and Salesmanship, all of which play a very important role in a solid marketing system for retailers.

Here are some questions you need to ask yourself to get started:

1. What kind of relationship do I have with my existing customers?

2. Do I have the contact information of all my existing customers?

3. Have I been staying in touch with my existing customers with direct mail, email, and phone calls?

4. Is my inventory good? Is my store full? If so, of what?

5. Have my sales been declining? If so, why?

6. Am I always actively seeking new customers?

There are literally dozens of other prevalent questions, but these are some of the main ones that help you determine where to start. By the way, closing a business is NOT something you want to do yourself UNLESS you have a system to follow. I’ve written a book about it, but I’ll provide a link for that at the end of the article. The book I wrote tells basically how we set up for and manage a successful retail liquidation Sale, beginning to end, and most times get a 90%-140% return on inventory cost for our clients. Does that happen every time? No.

Anyway, the reason you must ask yourself all these questions is that the answers will play an important role in how successful your Sale is. For example: if you have no customer database, then what we do is strategically build a database saturated for your close proximity area based upon who your ideal customer would be. Then we send out a very unique, custom sales letter about your store and your Sale, which is presented in an oversized invitation format. The key here is the copy of the sales letter. Writing copy is no easy task, but there are many books available on it should you be so inclined to write your own. The point: while this method will bring LOTS of people into your store to launch your Sale, if done properly, it will ALWAYS be better if you have an established list of regular customers to market to.

Next, your inventory. So many people contact me about doing a Sale for them, they send me pictures of their store, and the shelves and counters are half empty, and what they do have available is either old, outdated, or undesirable. I used to think this was common sense, but I’ve learned never to be surprised by things like this. Listen, if you want to close your business, if you want to do it profitably, then make sure you have a healthy, full inventory you’ll make a whole lot more money. Oh, and be sure to hire a professional. Oh, and when you hire a professional, be sure to ask them details about their marketing systems. You’ll be surprised at the different things you’ll hear. Let me just put it this way: there’s a lot of candy coating going on out there.

Now, you will have to make regular price reductions throughout the Sale, but you’ve got to be smart about it. Don’t start too high (most people not in the know start too high including many professionals), but also be sure to not mark down too soon. That could cost you money.

There’s so much more to tell, but I’ll leave it at this: If you’re going to be closing a retail store, then your Store Closing Sale must be well planned. If you already have a website, then be sure the company you use to help you actually builds or integrates a lead generation page or site for you to help you quickly establish a hyper-targeted list of customers that you can market to for free during your Sale, and secondly, make sure you have someone to help you that is truly qualified with a mind for CURRENT marketing methods.

You can’t afford not to. Learn more about how to close a business here.

Retail Stores Closing

Introduction Numerous companies have filed for bankruptcy, and thousands of stores across the United States are closing and liquidating their merchandise. Below follows a list of the chain stores and the extent of their closings for 2009.

Payless

This quarter 33 stores have closed and the company has announced that in the fiscal year of 2009, 143 more are anticipated to close

Zales

In the last quarter alone 118 stores have closed and 191 in the fiscal year 2009, 160 of which were stores and the remaining 31 were kiosks.

Blockbuster Video

Blockbuster has announced that they may close up to 20% of the stores before 2011, which is in between 810 and 960 stores.

Smith and Hawken

All of its stores are being closed down

Crabtree & Evelyn

The company has filed for bankruptcy and has announced that they will be closing stores in the near future.

Big 10 Tires

They have filed for bankruptcy and they have requested release from their leases on 32 stores.

Bank of America

The number of branches will decrease by 10%

Citigroup

The number of outlets will decrease and will be limited to the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S.

PacSun

40 of its 916 stores are going to close

Bulgari

Stores have already closed in Florida, Colorado, and New York, including its Madison Avenue store.

Sears and Kmart

28 more stores will be closing in 2009 in addition to the many that have already closed.

Samsonite

The company has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will be closing 83 of 173 stores.

Waldenbooks

The bookstore is part of the Borders Group and will be cutting its stores down by about 80%, from around 300 stores to 50 or 60.

Jo-Ann Stores

The company is undergoing reorganization and plans to open 20 new stores while closing 30 stores.

Rite Aid

The company has said that they will close up to 117 stores in the coming months.

J. Jill

Owned by Talbots, about 75 stores will close and the remainder will be sold to private owners.

Jones Apparel

First quarter profits were down by 98%. In response, they will shut 20% of stores, around 225 stores.

Whataburger

This year 12 restaurants in Florida have closed due to low sales.

Advanced Auto Parts

The company has announced that there are 55 unprofitable stores and they will close 40 of them.

Advance America Cash Advance Centers

60 centers have closed and 130 more are set to shut down

Ruehl Stores

Owned by Abercrombie & Fitch, all of the 29 stores will be closed.

Boaters World

Parent company Ritz Camera Centers suffered major loses due to the switch to digital photography and will be forced to shut down all 129 Boaters World stores

It is not hard to understand why LCD displays screens are rapidly being adopted by retail stores and restaurants. InfoTrends conducted a digital signage study where they polled consumers and found that “digital signage displays have a 47.7% effectiveness on brand awareness, increase the average purchase amount by 29.5%, create a 31.8% upswing in overall sales volumes, generate a 32.8% growth in repeat buyers and generate 32.8% more in-store traffic”.

LCD display screens are being used by restaurants for displaying the menu and entertainment, by garment and clothing retail stores to show videos of fashion shows and to showcase various products, and by automobile dealers as video walls to provide the feel of the car on the road and to keep the customer occupied as they wait for sales agent or other people.

LCD Display Usage in Restaurants: When visiting KFC Hyderabad (India), what grabs your attention is not so much the smell of food but the vibrant colours of the four 42-inch LCD display panels which serves as the overhead menu board. KFC Hyderabad sought the help of Sharp Business Systems India (http://www.sbsil.com) to set up the digital signage solution. LCD digital menus can be maintained from a remote central location or a local PC set up in the store. The benefit of remote central management is that menu, promotions, video, pricing and other items displayed on the LCD displays in the retail outlet can be managed from one central location to provide consistency and to make sure that the changes are made consistently across all stores at the same time. Consumers receive dynamic previews of the offering with potential for positive impact on sales. If restaurants have the networked point-of-sale cash registers collecting time based purchased data, marketing can get instantaneous feedback on how different promotions and pricing are having impact on sales.

Restaurants are also using LCD displays as televisions to spruce up the restaurant atmosphere. It is now a common expectation to have LCD TVs in restaurants that show the local sports or the news.

LCD Display Usage in Showrooms: Whether it is women clothing store, automobile showroom, convenient store or a department store, LCD displays are appearing in all these locations. A typical store has up to four LCD displays per site. InfoTrends study showed that business that had installed displays in their showroom, predominantly expected the display usage in their showrooms to increase. To grab and hold consumer attention, retailers are using LCD displays in a video-wall format or in a daisy chain format along with stand alone units. The content could be a mixture of video along with text or a combination. The goal is to target specific customers with specific information and this information may change with the time of the day – creating a retail company-owned, closed-circuit television network that runs nothing but the retail company programming.

Why do Retail Businesses Select LCD Displays vs. Plasma Displays?
There are a number of reasons why retailers and restaurants are selecting LCD display over plasma displays.

Fan-less Architecture of LCDs: LCD displays do not have a fan potentially resulting in less noise and distraction. This is less of an issue with newer higher end plasma displays, however it is worthwhile to keep track as you evaluate the two options.

Rugged Design of LCDs: LCD displays are closed-box units and more rugged. There is less chance of oil fumes, dust or other elements getting into the unit and reducing the life of the unit.

Resolution and Picture Quality: (A) Video resolution on LCD displays and plasma display are comparable but computer data is better observed on LCD displays. (B) LCDs are better to view in ambient light or in brightly lit rooms. As businesses usually work during the day in ambient light, LCDs are more desirable for most business applications. (C) Plasma manufacturers have made much of their viewing angles. However with new LCDs the view angles are 176. There is not much difference between the two technologies in viewing angle. (D) There have been concerns with burn-in for Plasma screens especially for static images. However, many Plasma manufacturers have improved their anti-burn in technology. There are no burn-in issues with LCD screens.

Life of the Display Unit: LCDs can be operated 24×7 for 50,000+ hours equivalent to 5+ years of continuous viewing. Plasma, on the other hand, typically has a half life of 30,000 hours. At half life, the phosphors in a plasma screen will glow half as brightly as they did when the set was new. There is no way to replace these gases; the display simply continues to become dimmer with use. An LCD TV will last as long as its backlight – and in many models the backlight bulbs can be easily replaced!

Power Consumption: Plasma TVs use more power than LCD – twice as much

Technology for both plasma and LCD display continues to change. Be sure to check updates to the technology for apple to apple comparison

More details about the LCD and plasma displays visit http://lcddisplay.sbsil.com

Your retail clothing store’s business plan requires a well-thought out customer analysis which describes what type of customers will make your store succeed.

Not Too Broad, Not Too Narrow

When choosing your customer target markets, make sure that they are neither too broad nor too narrow. The broader a target market, the more expensive and difficult to reach it and sell to it. For example, if the target market is simply “Residents of the Tri-state Area” this will tell you and readers little about the most effective means of reaching them.

Think further about who the most profitable customers within these broader markets will be and whether there are distinct groups of profitable customers worth mentioning. Profitable here refers to the total revenue that a certain customer will bring in through clothing purchases over a certain period, the customer’s likelihood to remain loyal and keep purchasing after that period, and the cost of achieving that customer through marketing and sales work.

If customer groups are too small, readers will be concerned that there isn’t enough potential revenue from the target markets for the store to show a profit. Remember that readers will not believe that you can ever achieve 100% of a market. You have to show that you will be able to break even with much smaller market shares, especially in the early days of your store.

Three or Four Segments Is Good Enough

To prove the excellence of your store’s potential, you may be tempted to write a list of target markets segments that you can target. Resist this temptation, and clearly show your focus on three or four segments at most for the short-term. If the amount of revenues that you can achieve from these groups seems limited over time, then you can go on to describe some future target markets, labeled as such, to detail the next steps the company can take when the original targets are tapped out.

Customer Values

For customers in each segment you describe, write about their specific reasons to buy from your store based on their values. Show the difference between each segment, because if two segments have the same values and needs, they could probably be lumped together as one. Don’t detail your promotion methods and product line again here as a way of explanation – those are covered elsewhere in your plan. Do be clear as to why each group listed is a good target for your clothing store.

Interior and exterior commercial retail lighting play an important role in every stores success. Exterior lights help people locate the store at night and assist in branding the establishment.

Interior lights provide general lighting and also bring out the color in merchandise which helps prompt a buying decision. When carefully chosen and properly installed, interior ambient and accent lighting increase the marketability and sales of products.

Because profit margins on all but the most expensive products are often marginal, overhead is the retailers biggest challenge. Always try to combine energy efficiency with superior luminance and lifespan when choosing lights for your retail clients.

Taking the time to comprehensively develop a multi-layered lighting system will both differentiate your clients and your work from that of lesser, competing lighting design firms.

Exterior

Aesthetics plays a critical role in commercial exterior retail lighting. Clients often judge the type of experience they will have inside a store by the appearance of the exterior and landscape.

Quality sign, walls or above entrances lighting is a must for any retail establishment. Goosenecks are excellent fixtures for this effect.

If the store is a standalone, it will need both building lights and canopy lights to properly illuminate its form and entranceways. Fluorescents are usually the fixtures to use for exterior retail lighting due to longer lamp life and high energy efficiency ratings.

Your clients will pay less per month for their use and experience very infrequent maintenance and replacement costs. Parking lot lights can be either general or decorative, depending on the nature of the establishment.

Make certain you meet mandatory foot candle requirements, pay close attention to the contrast of light and shadow that your lighting system establishes. This is a critical factor to safety than foot candle levels, and a very good reason to invest in a professional lighting photometric analysis.

Ambient Interior Lighting

Ambient light is another term for general light. The level of ambient lighting in a store is determined by two things.

First, the physical size will of course play a big role in the overall luminance the overhead lights will be able to shine throughout the building. Extremely large wholesale and grocery stores with high ceilings will need either high bay or low bay lights.

The newer pulse start metal halide lights offer superior energy ratings and make for very good retail lights in these environments. For retailers on a budget, or for ceilings under 25 feet in height, fluorescent low bay lights can be used instead.

Department stores, clothing stores, and smaller food stores can also be lit very effectively with parabolic troffer fluorescent lights. Retail discounts stores can use a series of parabolic fluorescents for general overhead lighting, and then selectively employ accent lights to draw attention to items on sale or special interest.

Accent Interior Lighting

Accent lighting sets a special product or group of products apart from the rest of the merchandise. Because of this, accent retail lighting plays an important role in the success of almost every retail establishment, regardless of size or product type.

Of course, its most important role is in high end retail lighting. Accent lighting helps differentiate unique qualities of products on display that require special attention and a sense of being set apart from the surrounding environment.

The lower the ambient lighting is, the brighter the accent lighting becomes, and the more removed an object appears from general reality. Jewelers and designer clothing retailers use this form of extreme contrasts between ambient and accent lighting to give a surreal appearance to merchandise.

A wide variety of recessed lights are often utilized for retail accent lighting. Adjustable fixtures are better because they allow managers to periodically change displays and readjust the lights to compliment the new setting.

Pendants are also very good retail lights to use over any display that is fixed in a central position within a store.

Designer Interior Lighting

Special display lights are often required in custom shelving and display cases. Linear strip lights for retail lighting are superb for jewelry, accessories, and specialty item displays. They can be mounted to the interiors of specialty display cases, or they can be mounted to the undersurfaces of shelves.