The Single Most Important Thing in Retail Thrift

Photo by Author, Patrick the Parrot

There are a lot of factors that play into a successful retail thrift store. Customer service, selection, good merchandising, and so on. Every component has to work at some level. There is one factor that rules them all.

A steady daily stream of fresh merchandise moving to the sales floor.

No customer wants to dig through the same stuff they saw weeks or a month ago. Stale inventory is nothing more than salvage being stored on the sales floor. It’s a sure fire way to lose customers.

So what to do.

First, a steady stream of fresh inventory coming in the back door makes or breaks a thrift business. If that isn’t working focus on that.

If you own sufficient inventory it’s a matter of keeping it moving to the sales floor and the cash register.

Customers figure out what days and times fresh goods are coming out, the regulars shop accordingly. If you don’t do production on the weekends, they will know and won’t shop. Do all of your production in the morning, expect to be busier then and mid day.

One store I took over did all of their prodution work Monday through Friday, mostly Monday through Thursday. Weekend business was terrible. We spread the same production over 7 days a week and sales went up. Then we had to increase production, which increased sales. It became a positive loop.

A reputation for pushing fresh goods to the floor open to close every day makes those treasure hunters come in more often. In today’s world that’s a huge staffing challenge.

The flip side is what to do with stuff that has been on the sales floor long enough. Some argue it’s good filler to make a store look fuller. That’s only a useful crutch if there isn’t enough inventory available to keep a floor full.

Once an item has been through a full color rotation, including discounting, your customer has told you what they think of it.

Then What?

Goods that have value on the bulk salvage market like metals, textiles, books, shoes etc, should be sold there.

Some goods that won’t sell still have value to other nonprofits. Partnering with a allied organizations can help someone in need and save things from a landfill.

I hate throwing things away, but goods that have proven to have no retail value, aren’t useful to others, or don’t have salvage value are, sadly, are candidates for land fills.

If there is plenty of fresh stuff in the back room, get it on the sales floor. That’s where it sells. Time and time again I have found that keeping the sales floor full of fresh goods, sells more goods. In many cases increasing production or processing payroll, and being sure it goes there, is payroll well invested.

Some people are reluctant to let stale goods go. It’s like keeping stock in Blockbuster because it did well in the past.

Fresh-Organized-Full is the three leg stool thrift succeeds on. It all starts with Fresh.