Calling All Independent Retailers: Your 5 Must-Dos for Successful Seasonal Transition

Navigating the seasonal transition is a tricky situation. As independent retailers, we are wrapping up the old season and planning for the new season–there are a lot of things to consider!
These 5 things are our MUST-DOs for a seamless transition.
Evaluate Existing Merchandise
In the excitement of the new season, It’s easy to sweep last season’s leftover merchandise under the rug and ignore it. But we need to cash out on these goods for a successful seasonal transition. Each piece of existing merchandise needs attention: can we sell it, at its current price, before it becomes seasonally irrelevant? If the answer is “no”, let’s take action to make the answer “yes”.
Highlight NEW & FRESH
Customer traffic sees a bump during the transitional period. As our customers are excited to take advantage of savings opportunities, they are curious to discover and take delight in the newness that we’re featuring. Highlight it, talk about it, be excited about it! Our enthusiasm is infectious and selling full priced merchandise is a margin booster!
Clean
With cleaning products in hand, let’s reconfigure the sales floor and product displays. Let’s customize those modular fixtures to highlight the current assortment and current inventory levels. Add/remove shelves/pegs/entire fixtures to elevate our customer’s shopping experience with our products in our shop.
Sales & Receiving
A new fresh season with a new set of performance metrics to plan, track, and react to. Does our merchandise receiving schedule set us up for sales success? Are we improving? Or are we working harder for each dollar that makes it to the bottom line? Do we have a solid, consistent, dependable way to track our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)? Let’s develop our tools, establish our decision tree, and make the process a habit.
Believe In Yourself
We can do it! The transitional period is overwhelming, but with careful planning and swift actions we can conquer this nerve racking period with grace and ease. Let’s make our decisions based on our experience, knowledge, and business metrics. Don’t delay! As Benjamin Franklin said, “You may delay, but time will not.” Here’s to progress, advancement, and to the fresh new season!

Carrie Watson, Retail Coach
Carrie started her retail life working at Fossil Inc. for 3 years where she discovered merchandise planning. She eventually moved to Austin to join the buying team of a specialty outdoor retailer for 5 years. As the retail merchandise manager, Carrie used RetailORBIT® with her buying team with efficiency and confidence. She experienced the benefits of using this system first hand and decided to help others discover this phenomenal platform.
Carrie’s passion is to encourage communal commerce by coaching its retailers. Her mission is help business owners and buyers find peace of mind by adding stability to their cash flow and encouraging sustainable operations. Retail coaching with Carrie is a great way to find the balance.