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newsletternewsletter 292
NRF (National Retail Federation) Holiday Survival Kit NRF (National Retail Federation) Holiday Survival Kit If you own or manage a retail store, you need this FREE publication (Holiday Survival Kit). “The National Retail Federation is the world's largest retail trade association, with membership that comprises all retail formats and channels of distribution including department, specialty, discount, catalog, Internet, independent stores, chain restaurants, drug stores and grocery stores as well as the industry's key trading partners of retail goods and services. NRF represents an industry with more than 1.6 million U.S. retail companies, more than 25 million employees - about one in five American workers - and 2007 sales of $4.5 trillion. As the industry umbrella group, NRF also represents over 100 state, national and international retail associations.” (From the NRF web site) The NRF site is one of those sites you should be visiting on a daily basis. Here is a smattering of information that you can read about at the NRF site and Holiday Survival Kit. · The most popular form of return fraud is the return of stolen merchandise. · 1/4 of department store sales occur during the holiday season. · 1/3 of all retail employees are under 24 years old. · 62% of retail workers are women. · 40% of items purchased on auction sites advertised as new, in box, were stolen or fraudulently obtained. · 50% of consumers say that everyday low prices or sale prices were the biggest influence in deciding where to shop. · Last minute holiday shoppers are more likely to be male, pay in cash, and don’t care about a flexible return policy. · 52.6% of holiday shoppers will complete their shopping ten days prior to Christmas (leaving 47.4% who will be shopping in the ten days prior to Christmas). Visit the NRF Web Site at http://nrf.com/. Click on just about everything. It is a great site for statistics, information, advice, and everything retail. To get the Holiday Survival Kit, click on the NRF Holiday Headquarters icon on the right hand side of the page. Now click on the Holiday Survival Kit… ...or, Click here to download the kit directly: http://www.nrf.com/modules.php?name=Documents&op=viewlive&sp_id=1931 ...or, Write to me at hgosman2004@optonline.net. The Death of a Great Magazine (PC Magazine Gone) I first placed a full page ad in PC Magazine about 28 years ago. As of January, it’s gone. Actually, to be accurate, the print edition of the magazine is gone, PC Magazine will be totally electronic as of January. At one time, PC Magazine had more than one million subscribers. Lately, subscribers have diminished to 600,000. Their ad revenues plunged from $215 Million in 2001 to $40 Million in 2007. If you remember the early days of computing, Byte Magazine was the leading computer publication back in the 1970s. Byte Magazine was truly a computer magazine for personal computer owners. A personal computer was a small computer that you could actually purchase in a store and take home to your house. If you were around in 1978, you were able to purchase an Apple computer, or a TRS-80 (Radio Shack), a Sol Computer or others for about $3,000. To keep this short, the early microcomputer era ended around 1981 when IBM introduced the IBM PC, which became the model for those computers we now use. With the introduction of the IBM PC came PC Magazine which was specifically dedicated to the IBM PC and it’s lookalikes. It was a great magazine, sometimes running 500 or more pages. Unlike Byte Magazine, PC Magazine was just about totally dedicated to those people using DOS (the operating system developed by Microsoft which eventually became Windows). The magazines grew larger and larger and soon became a twice per month publication since it had too many pages to be conveniently handled by readers if it only came out once per month. Like many retail businesses, the internet changed the way PC Magazine had to do business. The magazine figured out how to make money over the internet and has now made the decision to go totally digital. The printed magazine is gone. It’s a sad day for computer people, but you can still access pcmag.com online. It’s one of my favorite sites and on my list of sites that I visit each and every day (along with wsj.com, pcworld.com, and several business, news and retail sites). With the loss of the printed edition, I have one less publication to read in the bathroom or doctor’s waiting room. The world is changing. Read more about the end of the magazine at: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2335009,00.asp and http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081119/FREE/811199972/1051/information Who Steals The Most? Most people know the answer to this one. It’s your employees. According to a survey published in Chain Store Age magazine, 46.3% of retail store theft is committed by employees. 41.2% of theft is the traditional shoplifting theft. 5.8% of shrinkage comes from suppliers and vendors. Global theft costs retailers and consumers $104B annually (which can be easily covered by a government bail out). To read the Chain Store Age magazine article, go to: http://www.chainstoreage.com/story.aspx?id=85573 Greet Your Customers Well This is easily the number 1 tip for helping retailers increase sales. You should teach each of your employees to say hello to every customer that walks into the store. It doesn’t matter what type of store you have, every customer should receive a greeting by employees. Have you ever met a friend on the street or in a restaurant? Do you pass them by without saying hello? Do you ignore them? Your customers need that same level of respect. Look your customers in the eye and say hello, hi!, Yo!, or something.
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