The Magic of a Full Store

Photo by author taken off Sanibel Island. Nothing to do with the post, it’s just cool.

This isn’t just a thrift thing, it’s a retail thing. A store that looks full is more interesting to a shopper walking in the door, they stay longer and spend more. With all the supply chain disruptions we have all seen thinly stocked stores, even the big chains.

Keeping the sales floor full is a lesson I learned very early in my retail career. I was working in a mall store that decided to consolidate. A polite way to say they were closing. As our inventory dwindled, if a customer walked in at all they soon left, often saying that we must be closing. We had been instructed to pretend we were staying open.

Sales were terrible and it was depressing to work in a half empty store.

The back wall of this narrow deep store was set up with shelving units, I discovered they weren’t even screwed on. So I pushed them forward eliminating half of the retail space. We condensed and re-merchandised, suddenly we had a smaller but full looking sales floor.

Sales went up. We kept pushing the shelving wall forward as inventory dwindled.

Some suit from their corporate office showed up to tell me I couldn’t do that. By then about 2/3 of the sales floor had been eliminated. I took him to the now huge, back room full of empty fixtures and asked if he really wanted me to change it. He didn’t answer and changed the subject. So I kept it…