Excerpt: The gift, novelty, and souvenir store (gift store) industry includes about 30,000 stores with combined annual revenue of $13 billion. Major companies include Hallmark, Spencer Gifts, and Disney Stores (a division of The Walt Disney Company). The industry is fragmented: the top 50 companies represent 30 percent of industry sales.
Competitive LandscapeConsumer spending, special occasions, and tourist travel drive demand. The profitability of individual companies depends on effective merchandising and the ability to generate store traffic. Large companies have advantages in purchasing, distribution, and marketing. Small companies can compete effectively by selling specialty products, providing superior service, or delivering a unique customerexperience. The industry is labor-intensive: average annual revenue per worker is about $80,000. Gift stores compete with a wide range of businesses because they stock merchandise across many categories. Major competitors include mass merchandisers, department stores, Internet retailers, and toy stores. Products, Operations & TechnologyMajor products sold by gift stores include souvenirs and novelty items (25 percent of sales); seasonal decorations (15 percent); greeting cards (15 percent); and giftware (10 percent). Novelty items include gift baskets and prefilled balloons. Seasonal decorations include decorative cups, plates, and napkins. Giftware includes glassware and vases. Gift stores may also sell home accessories and provide services such as gift-wrapping and delivery. The average size for a gift store is 2,000 square feet, with 1,500 square feet dedicated to selling space. About half of stores have annual sales under $250,000… Inventory size and selection can vary. Merchandise changes constantly due to different market trends in each gift category. Many gift stores continuously add and drop product categories, as well as lines within categories. Popular categories include candles and candle accessories, greeting cards, holiday products, jewelry, photo frames, and collectibles. Some gift stores offer private label merchandise…
Source: http://www.hoovers.com/gift-and-souvenir-stores/--ID__323--/free-ind-fr-profile-basic.xhtml
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Excerpt: Retailing is one of the fastest-growing segments of the economy. As one of the nation's largest employers, the retail industry provides excellent business opportunities for you. At least one-third of the 500,000 or so new enterprises launched each year are retail operations. The entrepreneurs behind these ventures risk their capital, invest their time and make a living by offering consumers something they need or want… The National Retail Federation says more than 1 million retailing companies operate more than 1.4 million retail establishments in the United States. Most are store retailers, though there are other types of enterprises--such as e-commerce, mail order, automatic-merchandising (vending) machines, direct retailing (door-to-door and home party sales), and service providers… Specialty retailing. While power retailers like Wal-Mart or Target tend to sell "needs," specialty retailers tend to sell "wants." They focus more on neighborhood convenience, the richness of the shopping experience, and inventory that meets the needs of their target customer on a personalized basis. Small stores show surprising strength and resilience in the face of competition from large-scale retailers and e-commerce outlets. They offer the consumer a warmer atmosphere, and perhaps a broader and deeper selection of merchandise… Entrepreneurs wanting to buy an existing business will have to do as much--or more--research and careful analysis as is required when starting from scratch. Carefully evaluate the opportunity cost of entering various industries through acquisition. Do your due diligence and make sure there aren't any hidden reasons for the sale of the business--for example, the opening of a major competitor within your market area, a scheduled road widening that would take part of your parking lot, or increasing crime in the area… Once you've decided on a layout for your business, turn your attention to space allocation. Seven fundamental principles should guide you: 1. Show all merchandise to all customers. The more merchandise customers see, the more they will buy. You want to design your store to entice customers to visit all departments or at least to see what the store has and return another time… 2. Give choice locations, where inside customer traffic is heavy, to the most profitable items. High-markup and impulse items should be very visible. 3. Discourage shoplifting. Keep small, expensive items under lock and key, use convex mirrors where blind spots cannot be eliminated, and install video monitors… 4. Experiment to stay exciting. To accommodate changes in layout and merchandise displays, you need to have fixtures that are movable and adjustable, so keep this in mind when you're buying cabinets, shelving, lighting and other furnishings…
Source:http://www.entrepreneur.com/startingabusiness/businessideas/startupkits/article75912-5.html
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Excerpt: Seasonal retailers may have stores in places where there is a lot of snow in the winter or colorful foliage in the fall or great ocean views in the summer but they all experience similar sales highs and lows depending on when the bulk of their customers want to be in the area. For some seasonal store owners, running a retail operation in an area where they do most of their business in just a few months out of the year offers a lot of advantages: an opportunity to live in a naturally beautiful area; the ability to take it easy for part of the year; and, the chance to become part of what is often an interesting, quirky, or unique part of the country. There is also an opportunity to have a thriving retail business. But a seasonal retailer needs to pay careful attention to certain details—such as cultivating customers, predicting and managing inventory, and managing marketing campaigns and staffing—in ways that the year-round retailer does not… Fleener notes that historical traffic patterns are key for seasonal retailers trying to predict inventory. Another good resource for seasonal retailers without an established selling history is other retailers in non-competing marketplaces. Fleener recommends finding someone whose business is similar but in a different location. "You'll get good information. It's difficult to understand inventory if you are just starting out. Another retailer might be able to give you that," he says. Vendors can also be helpful in giving seasonal retailers a sense of the amounts they should order. Fleener notes, though, that in general retailers should estimate conservatively when buying inventory. "I'd rather scramble in season to get new inventory than be left with a lot of stuff," he says. "One of the advantages of being a small retailer is they should be able to move faster to adjust to market conditions." … Erratic Traffic Flow? Kenney drums up business in the quiet time by advertising in the local Chamber of Commerce's map and booklet and leaving fliers in area restaurants. Moore-Thompson's Suncatchers has also become part of the fabric of the Sanibel Island community and it's that fact that enables him to keep the store open all year round. "The locals are floating the store in between busy times," he says. "Otherwise we would close for certain periods. We get people from the mainland who come out here because they love the store. It's become a social hub. People like to come in and talk." But all seasonal retailers don't see a good portion of their customers for a good part of the year, whether they stay open all year or not. Switanowski-Barrett says that one of the most important things a seasonal retailer can do is keep in touch with their customers all year through e-mail blasts or cards. "You can still communicate with people even if most of your customers aren't there," she says. "Don't stop marketing and reminding people about what you do. Many of these stores have niche products and can sell products over the Web or the phone."…
Source: http://www.giftshopmag.com/2009/winter/gift_shop_stories/a_season_to_sell
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Excerpt: Technology tools … they keep evolving everyday to make tasks such as recordkeeping easier and more efficient. Probably the single primary retail technology tool available today is the Point-of-Sale (POS) system. They aren't new; Gifts & Decorative Accessories began covering them as far back as the 1990s. And when G&DA surveyed gift retailers in 2000, the median cost of a POS system was about $7,000 — a sizable business investment. Nowadays, by contrast, the average price dropped to less than half that: $2,000–$3,000, according to Martin M. Altmann, sales representative for gift industry-specific POS software supplier GiftLogic by Merry Mechanization Inc., Englewood, FL… “About 70 percent of locations are still manual, meaning they hand-write tickets or use a cash register that you could buy at Staples,” concurred Zion Shina, CEO of Los Angeles-based POS vendor Attitude POSitive. “With traditional cash registers, the store owner has no record of what's sold. The receipts often state only a money figure and a general category such as 'Grocery.' Customer satisfaction is very low because you get a receipt and it's just a bunch of numbers. You have no idea what you got charged for.”… Pointed in the Right Direction The very inventory control piece that is left out of Cash Register Plus is the key selling point for Point of Sale systems for many gift retailers. In these lean times, many businesses can't afford to stockpile product like they used to — or, on the other hand, to run out of stock and maybe miss a sale. To turn inventory faster by zeroing in on and replacing slower sellers — and to reorder just in time, rather than too early or too late, a store needs a full-fledged Point of Sale system. “It helps you optimize where you spend your working capital, especially in this environment where you can't get a loan and people aren't shopping as much,” said Brady. Altmann says that the tight economic situation has led his customers to increase their focus on inventory control… On the Periphery Increasingly common as an accessory is the bar code scanner. At one time, there was considerable resistance to bar code scanners in the gift industry. Some complained of down-market connotations of grocery stores, while others said they took everything out of the packaging to increase its perceived value. However, today's customers are so acclimated to bar codes on even the highest end merchandise that the stigma, if any, has faded, and bar codes allow for unparalleled real-time inventory control. Not only do they make checking in new products much quicker and easier, but inventory is updated in real time whenever a product checks out in the hands of a customer. “Bar code scanners for checking items out is definitely nice,” observed Altmann, “because as you scan them, it takes them out of your inventory. There is less room for error…
Source: http://www.giftsanddec.com/article/CA6626258.html
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