Why is Selling Apparel so Tricky in Running Stores and What Can you do to Sell MORE of it in Your Store?
Let’s face it… people are busier than ever before…and even if they’re not, they love acting like they are. It’s the world we live in… everybody seems to be busier than a squirrel in a peanut factory (or something). So why on Earth would somebody take the time to dig through an uninspiring, cluttered wall of mis-matched apparel that looks the same as it did last year when they stopped by? Remember, often, they only came in to quickly grab their race packet in the first place and are short on time!
The answer, unfortunately, is… THEY WOULDN’T. You stand absolutely zero chance of catching the eye of that stressed out busy customer with a dated looking apparel display that hasn’t been reset in over 12 months. Sure, you swap out the solid colored tech tee from Spring for the new Fall one that looks exactly the same but is a different shade of the safest colorway you could order. But other than that, there’s no new life in your apparel displays.
This is the single biggest obstacle that I’ve seen in the 30+ years I’ve been merchandising apparel in specialty run and bike stores. Buyers and owners are terrified to mix up the product mix. They got burned once, 12 years ago by bringing in an edgy print and have hidden behind the “nobody buys prints” safety net to justify their overly boring solid, safe color tech tee buying patterns for every season since. Trust me. This is a thing.
In addition to uninspired apparel buying, here are several other key factors that limit your success in selling apparel:
Equally as boring merchandising and presentations. Nobody EVER walks in to a running store planning on buying 4 pieces of apparel. They buy those 4 pieces because they get EXCITED and emotionally attached. This only happens with interesting merchandising. Mix up your displays. Change them frequently and make them interesting with props, mannequins, new colors, images and feature call out signs.
Lack of mannequins. If I had a buck for every retailer who’s told me that they don’t think mannequins are worth it, I could have sold my business 10 years ago and moved to the Carribean to live out my “if I had all the money in the world” fantasy. This belief is SIMPLY INCORRRECT!! Just look at some of the most successful apparel retailers out there such as Nike, Lululemon, Athleta, Target and Anthropologie and you'll see that their stores are loaded with mannequins. Learn from these successful businesses who have already done the research and trust me when I say that you WILL SELL MORE APPAREL if you invest in more mannequins. It’s retail science.
Poor location in your store. As I mentioned earlier, people very rarely, dare I say never, enter a specialty run store solely looking to purchase apparel. So don't make your objective even HARDER by placing it poorly in your store. Your goal is to excite and entice them in to spending their hard earned money on this already challenging category. Why are you making your customers walk through the entire store past the check out, behind the smelly shoe drop donation bin, around the treadmill to FINALLY get to apparel? This isn’t going to cut it. If your apparel isn’t hitting your customers over the head as they enter your store then you need to reset your space..asap as possible! (See what I did there?) Trust me. Making it easy to shop and actually…impossible to miss… is the key to getting people engaged and purchasing your apparel.
We have worked with specialty stores on increasing their apparel sales for decades and I have yet to have a client who hasn’t seen significant sales increases in this category after working together. It’s not rocket science. But it is retail science, and it really can turn this category from a dreaded section in the store that you have to carry, to a highly profitable section that excites your customers and keeps them coming back to see what’s new!
If this article makes you curious about what else you may be able to learn about retail science and how to sell more in your store, then you’d be crazy not to take a look at our Online Training Courses. We’ve got self paced courses that will give you and your staff the confidence you need to merchandise better and to sell more product! You’ll feel smarter for just giving it a try!