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Plan for the year with a renewed sense of optimism

Are we out of this recession? Most days, it honestly does not feel like it. However, being down at the Americas Mart Atlanta (North America’s largest gift trade show) I certainly have a renewed sense of optimism.

Compared to last year this time, the energy is greater, people are more excited, the vendors are displaying more new items and the general sense of optimism is much greater. It’s very refreshing to see. It’s almost as if everyone took last year to regroup, and now they’re ready to move forward.

For us, it is affecting our buying as well. This time last year, we were all about reducing purchases, reducing inventory and conserving cash. Now for this coming year, we’re back to looking for opportunities to buy more new products and grow our business.

I know we’re excited for the coming year. Cheers to a successful 2010!

Refine your purchasing strategy to buy products that sell

I recently had a phone conversation with a large retailer from BC. We were discussing purchasing strategies and the upcoming trade shows that we were both attending.

He told me something that he learned 30 years ago and has always stuck with him. He said; “You have to work hard to find really great deals.” He went on to say; “When I find an amazing deal, in my mind the product is already sold.”

For those of you travelling to trade shows, or reviewing your vendor buying programs, make sure you look for those great deals. Find the deals and the sales will follow!

Let ideas flow and empower your staff to be creative and see them succeed

Sometimes it’s best if the owner just gets out of the way.

I had an experience like this recently when one of our staff members in our Moncton store wanted to run wild with a live auction on the night of our Customer Wine & Cheese Event – a Christmas customer appreciation night at our store. Linda Thibideau, our outside sales associate, wanted to hold a live auction in order to raise money for the local soup kitchen. At first we were a little skeptical about the idea. She was so enthusiastic about it that in the end, we just let her run wild. (more…)

Boomer couple take big steps

Couple ponders the options open to them in retirement after working for themselves for so many years. Now that retirement is on the horizon, they’re asking all the big questions.

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Retail: The genius of Dollarama

At 8:30 on a December morning, after a damp snowfall had turned the streets of Montreal slushy and unpleasant, Larry Rossy arrived at the downtown location of his next Dollarama to consider toilet placement. The founder and chief executive of Canada’s largest dollar-store chain, Rossy, who is 67, still worries about banal details.

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Mom + Entrepreneur = Mompreneur

The development of new web tools has made it increasingly attractive for mothers to work from home on hours that fit their schedules. “The term mompreneur was coined almost two decades ago so it’s not a brand new idea, but what’s happening is that there’s growing recognition that there’s more of us,’ says Ms. Schultz, the mother of three young children and founder of Entrepreneurial Moms International (www.entrepreneurialmoms.org), an online destination for other mothers running small businesses.

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Retain customer loyalty even after negative feedback with creative notes of appreciation.

Nurse Next Door, a Vancouver based senior care company uses the humble pie approach to keeping valued, albeit sometimes, complaining customers. Each time they receive a complaint, they send out a freshly baked pie with a message that says “We have messed up, and we are humbled.”

The firm estimates that they have kept over $90,000 worth of business for the cost of approximately $1,300 worth of pies over the years. What an innovative idea! Now that’s something that their customers will always remember.

We’ve all heard that keeping an existing customer is much less costly than trying to acquire a new one.  So what is in your program for those customers who might have been unhappy with the service they received from your company? (more…)