Maximize Foot Traffic and Sales this Holiday Season

Get Customers Excited About the Season

Consignment stores can increase sales and foot traffic during the holidays by using a number of proven tactics. The holidays present a natural increase in sales—besides keeping up with seasonal fashion, gifts, and decorations, shopping increases generally. However, stores can take additional steps to use the momentum of the holidays to the fullest extent. Those steps are: utilizing local events, collaborating with stores and creators, and rotating/promoting seasonal inventory digitally and on location. Even the smallest efforts (like the example Instagram posts below) can have a big impact.

This creator's Instagram is a great example of utilizing a limited number of resources (a smartphone, an Instagram account, and a couple of friends to model) to generate a lot of intrigue and store traffic.

If consignment stores follow the steps in this article, studies show that this holiday season they can:

• Gain more foot traffic

• Have customers shop longer

• Have customers visit more frequently

• Increase sales, especially “impulse buys”

• Give customers a more satisfying experience (increasing the chance they will return)

• Gain brand recognition

To achieve these benefits, this article lays out the most important and most verified tactics that resale and consignment stores can take this holiday season. 

Increase Foot Traffic and Visibility with Events and Collaborations

These are the first and perhaps most important tactics. During the quickly changing holidays and seasons, stores should be sure to adjust their decor and inventory to fit the time at hand. These small changes have big impacts. They can:

• increase customer foot traffic by 25%

• increase sales by 10-30%

• increase the likelihood of repeat customers

• increase customer satisfaction and customers' shopping time

• increase inventory turnover which rewards your consignors, encouraging them to consign more items.

Creating a seasonal atmosphere can best be accomplished in two ways. The first is simply by adjusting the decor. But a much more impactful step is to partner with local events and businesses. 

Partnering with local events and businesses has a positive impact any time in a year, but it is doubly so during the holidays. A large list of benefits occur with these partnerships, but suffice it to say, that local events can greatly increase foot traffic and visibility. Research shows that holiday markets and fairs, along with pop-up events are among the highest-yielding events (think of a “Fall Season Specials” pop-up at a farmer’s market); but the success of events and partnerships will depend on the specifics of each city or town. 

If not known already, there are a few good ways to find out about local events. The first is the city’s government website—all towns big and small will have a city website. Secondly, social media: Facebook has an “events near me” view, and searching Instagram can also be fruitful, especially by following accounts that post local events. If there are no local events occurring, here are a number of easy collaborations or seasonal ideas:

• Sip and Shop (coffee shop, winery, brewery, bar)

• Snack and Shop (coffee shop, bakery, 

• Jewelry and Styling event (partner with a local jewelry shop or beauty products store) 

• Art Walk and Shop 

• Wine, Cheese, and Wardrobe

• Tunes and Trends (get a local musician to play some live music)

• Paws and Purchase (have a dog-friendly day)

Remember, a lot of other stores, creators, or artists want to promote their businesses and items as well and will be receptive to opportunities to collaborate with other stores. 

Rotate and Promote Seasonal Inventory to Create Interest and Repeat Customers

Rotating inventory is one of the best habits a consignment store can have. Obviously, all consignment inventory “rotates” in the sense the inventory is mostly unique and when it sells, it is replaced. But by arranging your inventory along customer paths, crafted displays, and marketing, consignment and resale stores can generate a lot of interest, FOMO (fear of missing out), and repeat customers. In other words, make inventory rotation dramatic and prominent.

The first step is to encourage consignors to drop off seasonal inventory. Encourage them to bring in items from more than one season—send them a list of the upcoming seasons and holidays so they are prompted to remember that old winter coat in the back of the closet:

• Fall

• Halloween

• Thanksgiving

• Winter

• Christmas

• New Years

  

Inform Customers and Consignors Digitally

The best ways to digitally inform customers about seasonal inventory are 1) through the store website, 2) using NearSt, 3) through social media, and 4) personalized email marketing. Customers will interact with consignment stores on different channels; having consistent, seasonal branding (i.e., showing fall inventory on the website, socials, and emails) is important to spread awareness to as many customers as possible. 

On the store website, consider adding a homepage section announcing and displaying new inventory or link to another page.

NearSt is a software that can drastically increase footfall. 81% of shoppers research online before buying. When one of those nearby shoppers is looking for a product in Google, NearSt's local ads solution places a store's products at the top of Google, helping them win more local customers. ConsignCloud integrates with NearSt, so that any store inventory can appear without any manual work on the store's end. Learn more about NeartSt here.

With the camera quality in most smartphones, stores can easily shoot their inventory and post on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest (Instagram and Facebook stories are especially useful for less curated posts). Using social media for consignment is easier than most people think, and it is only going to get more important. Presenting seasonal changes can be as thorough as curated outfits and displays, to simply posting the seasonal items with a hashtag. It's recommended that posts be as professional as possible, but this small store Instagram account and this one are good examples of how a little bit of effort can go a long way. 

Inform Customers and Consignors in the Store

The best ways to display inventory in the store are going to be through mannequin displays, entry displays, and power walls. As this article explains, mannequins are effective because they can cross-merchandise, display, a number of items at once, and tell a story. Because entry displays and power walls are the two most eye-grabbing sections of a store, by rotating inventory in these sections regularly, customers will understand that they need to keep coming back to see new inventory or they may miss out on great finds. Again, here are a couple of examples of real stores changing up their entry displays and power walls to get their customer's attention:

By displaying new, seasonal inventory in these attention-grabbing displays, the store is sending a message to their customers that new inventory is available throughout the store.

Lastly, consider branching out and layering in new kinds of items to your store. Research shows that by adding complementary, on-brand but distinct inventory (like adding watches and jewelry to apparel sections) increases the average order value of customer purchases. This is otherwise known as cross-merchandising, which has a long track record of creating more customer impulse buys.

Create a Calendar for Promoting End-of-Season Sales and Promote New Seasons Simultaneously

Depending on how a consignment store expires its inventory, pre-planning end-of-season sales will aid in selling dead stock and generating more foot traffic. It is best to provide these kinds of sales the day after specific holidays (i.e. a Halloween sale on November 1st, etc.).

When promoting sales for old inventory, stores can simultaneously promote new seasonal inventory. As discussed, showing customers rotated inventory produces more than just immediate sales. By folding in new inventory promotions into end-of-season sales, stores are incentivizing customers to consign, buy, and return to shop from numerous angles at once.

Keeping inventory organized and correctly labeled will be critical in making this rotation process efficient. ConsignCloud users are able to organize their inventory using tags: stores can “tag” items with colors, dates, seasons, and more. So if a store wants to begin collecting fall inventory in the summer and plan for a fall power wall, they can tag these items during the intake process and even have that information displayed on the item’s label. This way, when a store wants to make a major inventory rotation at the start of the fall season, they can quickly identify all their items that belong to the “Fall 2024” tag and even have it labeled as “For Power Wall” or “For Mannequin,” thus streamlining the rotation process. This can also be done for minor inventory rotations, with items tagged and labeled as “Rotation A,” "Rotation B," stores can quickly identify and swap displayed items. Jump into the inventory table to start experimenting with tags in preparation for the quickly approaching season.

Experiment, Execute, Celebrate

As noted above, a little bit of work can go a long way. Stores may not have the personnel to attend local events, collaborate, create digital marketing, and rotate inventory. But every store can assess their resources and then pick the most meaningful step they can take. While promoting seasonal changes and inventory across all channels is going to be the most effective way to generate foot traffic, promotion in one area is better than none. Here are a few points of advice for stores that are in different situations.

Take stock of the store's strengths and weaknesses to determine a focus for promotion. For instance, if a store does not have a social media account, but is close to a neighboring coffee shop, collaborating for a few Sip and Shop events is likely going to be more effective than starting social media accounts and promoting items there.

Of course, all these strategies and tactics are designed to increase foot traffic and sales. But we also recommend letting fun, celebratory spirit come through. Customers want to shop, but they also want to celebrate.

See even more specific strategies and tactics for the Christmas season.