You’ve got excess stock. We’ve got ideas.
New year, better redemption area 🎉
It can feel like a choreographed dance in order to have the right amount of prizes for your guests. Sometimes it’s smooth as a waltz while other times you feel like you’ve been stuck doing the Stanky Leg.
What’s this you say?
It’s important to strike the perfect balance so that you aren’t left with too much inventory, or inventory you are struggling to move. This can keep your capital tied up while also restricting you from buying new & trendy items that you know will move quicker.
How do you find balance, or rather how does one waltz whilst Stanky Legging? We’re here to give you some important hot takes — some a little less practical than others — on how to get rid of extra product!
1 | DIY Party Bags
While we have two great options for pre-assembled party bags to offer your party bookings, you can always customize your own! Gather an assortment of small items from your excess inventory. Place them into one bag and calculate the average cost of the items. Add a profit margin percentage and SHAMWOW! You’ve just created an upsell opportunity for your party program.
2 | Create a marketing promotion
Ever wanted to go ham on a promotion, but never had a good enough reason? Good news, you might have all the reasons you need sitting right there taking up space in your stockroom!
We suggest starting a “manage out” section on your wall. This can be a hodgepodge of all the different types of items that you’d like to purge from your inventory. Don’t forget merchandising best practices, though. Learn about those in our Merchandising 101 eCourse!
After you have your manage out section started, it’s time to work your magic! We suggest highlighting it so that customers know this particular area of the wall is where the deals can be found. As far as deals, here are a few ideas:
- Tickets are worth double when redeeming from your manage out section
- Pre-load ~200 tickets on the redemption card for the guest’s next visit when they choose a prize from your manage out section
- Reduce the ticket amount for each prize in your manage out section
- Offer a free drink (or snack) when guests redeem from this section
- Send out a post on social media and offer a free prize — within a certain ticket value range — for mentioning the post when a guest is redeeming their tickets
3 | Donate, donate, donate
What goes around, comes around. We know this won’t get you your money back, and let’s face it… that’s not ideal. However, this will help you stand out and make your community a better place. You didn’t hear it from us, but doing good can be a marketing tactic, too!
We’ve connected with our local Ronald McDonald House Charities to stock a room full of toys for their guests. Check with your local Ronald McDonald House to see if they would be interested in taking some of your excess stock off your hands.
Check in with doctor’s offices in your community to see if they accept donations. We’re in the business of creating smiles, right? Getting a toy post-shot is a sure way to make the tears go away for a crying child.
Other places always looking for toys? Toys for Tots, day care centers, social services, children’s homes, churches, schools, police & fire stations.
4 | Add a little curb appeal
If you don’t want it maybe your neighbors will. Sure, you sacrifice your return on investment, but you’ll be making the neighborhood kids happy.
Moral of the story:
Start the new year by getting out of your over-stock fiasco. We want you to begin 2023 with good inventory and ordering processes.
A few other quick tips to get you started:
Our Storyboards are a great way to limit your choices when ordering product — why make hundreds of product decisions that might work, when you can make a few that will? Storyboards are pre-themed merchandise layouts, backed by analytics.
How Storyboards work: We use sales analytics from hundreds of customer locations to provide you with fast-moving, themed product mixes that help keep your wall looking great and your customers happy.
