Faced with a slow summer month, Steve Pickering, the ‘unorthodox’ CEO of South East independent bed retail chain Sussex Beds, decided to up the ante with a bold, brash clearance sale – which delivered a few surprising results …
The power of window marketing shone back in June as we launched our Stock Clearance Sale, with a key hook being the value of stock we aimed to sell down: “Half a Million ££’s of Stock to Clear!”
June is typically a quiet month in the bed business – yes, bed buying has seasonal peaks and troughs, and June is one of the bigger troughs. With fewer active consumers, advertising and marketing activity is generally reduced or toned down.
However, after identifying excess stock levels, we decided to implement a Stock Clearance Sale. No additional budget was allocated to advertising this campaign, meaning communication would solely rely on window and in-store PoS materials. We created the campaign designs in-house, along with PoS material, utilising our in-house printing facility. The result? Bold, red, and clear.
The outcomes were pretty conclusive. Footfall for the month surpassed our target by over +6% – bear in mind that the previous two quarters had missed footfall targets by double-digit margins. This was incredible! The window displays had done their job, enticing people in.
Footfall, however, only tells part of the story. The promotion centred around price and clearance, resulting in our AOV target falling short by -17%. The communication had attracted those seeking lower-priced, entry-level product lines, but failed to appeal to premium product seekers.
The net result saw us just fall short of our revenue target. However, the learnings have inspired a whole new window promotional strategy. This new approach mixes offer messages with premium product lines and service communications, aiming to appeal to a much broader range of consumers and push footfall upward without affecting AOVs.
Have you ever been drawn into a store by an eye-catching window display? What caught your attention?
Discover more of Steve’s thoughts in his blog.
