By Ed Avis
Costume sales and rentals are the bread and butter of most NCA members, but some savvy members add revenue by selling non-costume items. One of the panel discussions during the recent NCA Success Summit focused on that topic, and we’ve collected five key tips from that discussion.
Panelists for the panel were Louella Torrence, owner of Drop Me a Line Costume Shop in Allentown, Penn.; Dick Stoner from Stoner’s FunStore in Fort Wayne, Ind.; Jerry Bradley from Discount Costumes in Warner Robins, Georgia; Tushar Mehta from Camden Passage; and Susan Gray from Super Impulse.
1. Sell Impulse Items: Your customers probably are coming into your store for costumes, so you if you want to succeed with non-costume items, you need to catch their attention. That’s what impulse items do. Small toys, games, novelties and other low-priced, fun items sell the best. They catch the buyer’s attention at the counter and they’re generally cheap enough that they fit within anyone’s budget.
And sometimes impulse items simply satisfy a need: Gray said some buyers of impulse items are parents trying to quiet their kids: “As soon as mom comes in with a kid bawling his eyes out, mom says, ‘Here’s a toy. Be quiet.’”
Some collectible items also can be considered impulse items. For example, many customers love the low-cost comics Bradley sells at Discount Costumes – they range from $1.50 to $4. “It’s been a wonderful additional stream of revenue for us,” he said. Gray said Super Impulse offers a number of tiny collectables – a recent addition is a group of Halloween-related characters such as Frankenstein and the Vampire. “We’ll probably have 12 collectable figures for your Halloween season,” she said.
2. Display Your Items Effectively: One nice thing about non-costume items is that many of them are small, especially the impulse items like little toys and novelties. Nevertheless, they need to be well displayed, the panelists said. For example, Stoner devotes six showcases and the shelves behind them to his magic tricks, which ensures customers have a lot to look at. Counter space naturally is premium real estate for these items, and that’s where Torrence displays many of her impulse items, such as her Boxing Nun and chattering teeth. “I’ve always had my front counter covered with samples so people could play with everything,” she said.
It’s important to change up your displays frequently. For example, each morning Bradley selects a different handful of his comic books and displays them poking out of the boxes. “That way it’s eye-appealing when customers come in, and they just tend to gravitate right towards them,” he said.
Another effective way to display retail items is by getting a display rack from the manufacturer. Gray said Super Impulse offers a rotating rack that holds a selection of the company’s “World’s Smallest Toys and Games.” In addition, several of their products, such as their tiny Wacky Packages items, come in colorful counter displays. Similarly, Mehta said Camden offers their cosmetic contact lenses in a counter display that holds 144 pairs in a space that is about 20 by 10 inches. “From a space perspective, it’s a fantastic product,” Mehta said.
3. Demonstrate: Whatever non-costume items you’re selling, from magic tricks to toys, you’ll sell more of them if you can show customers how they work. “The main thing about selling magic is demonstrating it,” Stoner said. “The thing about magic that’s interesting is you do a magic trick and they say, ‘How’s that done?’ And you don’t tell people how it’s done. The secret is sold when the magic sold. They will want to know how to do it, and they’ll buy one, and then they have fun with it and they’ll come back and buy more.”
Torrence also succeeds with demonstrations. “You give customers a shocking pen to sign their charge, and they will buy that pen,” she said. Torrence said another great seller over the years was fake dog poo, which she also “demonstrated” in a fashion. “We’d set one on the floor, and somebody would say to you, ‘Do you see what happened?’ And of course we’d say, ‘Yeah, sure, you can buy it.’ We sold tons of those.”
4. Cross Sell: Many non-costume products are related to costumes. For example, most of the comic books Bradley sells include superheroes in costume. “It’s been nice because what happens is people interested in comic books often get into costumes, too,” Bradley said. “We’ve got a room towards the back with our comic books, and we keep our superhero costumes there, too. So they tend to complement each other.” Similarly, people buying Halloween costumes might be interested in little Halloween figurines, fake blood, trick-or-treat lights, and other such items.
5. Make Holiday Connections: Selling non-costume items are a great way to bring in revenue tied to Easter (such as little toys and games for Easter baskets), Christmas (stocking stuffers), summer vacation (things for kids to read or play with in the car during long drives), Valentine’s Day (little romantic gifts), St. Patrick’s Day (green pins, hats, and other accessories) and of course Halloween (scary little figurines, books of ghost stories, etc.).
The last piece of advice during the panel discussion came from Torrence: “Just dive in and try a few items,” she said. “You can’t lose.”