Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
2 Proven Techniques to Help Sell Your Clothing Line. Free People Collection. Merchandising 201 by Brandon Graham
Last month PinkyShears was invited to the Free People 40th Street showroom in NYC, to attend a sales meeting where merchandisers educated the store specialists and sales staff on styles for the upcoming Holiday ‘09 season. The objective for the night was to review sales objectives for each store, review the collection, and show how to sell and merchandise the clothes. The merchandisers from the Philadelphia offices headed the meeting.
They began the night by telling the history behind the brand. Did you know Free People was the original Urban Outfitters store, started in the 1970’s? And get this, the original premise of the store was you could take clothing for free and replace it with your own items you no longer wanted. Does that exist today? I think that’s the coolest concept!
...Read more about their history.
After the intro they broke down what each store needed to sell to reach their sales goals. The level of detail was interesting, down to what was needed to be sold per hour to meet expectations.
After that the merchandisers went over the different themes for the season. One was called “Add A Little Romance.” They described it as soft, flirtatious, girly, lots of ruffles, and flowing. Very well designed.
The fun and interactive part of the night was playing dress-up for grown ups. The store specialists and sales staff were instructed to break off into groups and take all the looks presented to them and style a mannequin to reflect the ideal Free People girl. They had to explain how old she was, where she was going, her occupation. Clory, the person who invited me, and is also childhood friend I grew up with, her team won.
Over the years I have come to admire and respect merchandisers for their ability to know what the customer wants sometimes better than the designers. They seem to understand how to indirectly help close a sale through the staff on the selling floor when dealing with a cautious, fickle, and price-conscious buyer. I did learn something that night which reminded me of a selling technique taught to me by an experienced sales manager. I felt I was being let in on a little secret. They called it “suggestive selling.”
There are two techniques
1) Creating an outfit for the customer while they are in the fitting room
2) Recommending accessories and add-ons.
It sounds simple enough, but it has many built-in benefits to sales. They didn’t mention the thought process behind the techniques to the associates, but my take on it is this…
I think creating an outfit helps by directing the customer. It gives them social reassurance like, “I think this is nice. Try it on and see how you feel.” Notice the use of the word “feel,” not “think”. Feeling is an emotion, which is usually irrational. How many times have you made an impulsive/irrational purchase? Plus, if they like the salespersons’ suggestion, it helps the buyer to get over being unsure if they are making the right decision. Buyers have fears, notice the emotion again, about what others might think.
Recommending add-ons like socks, bandeaus, tights and accessories works the same way, building a customer’s confidence in creating a put-together look, with something that seems harmless like a small purchase. These accessories are purposefully placed near the checkout. When I heard that it reminded me of what a friend who sold men’s suits told me his secret to selling was. He said, “if you have a array of product there is an order to selling it.” In his case he sold the suit first, then the shirt, then the socks. The thought behind that is if the suit is $1000, a $100 shirt won’t seem so expensive compared to the $1000. Whereas selling the shirt first, makes the suit a harder sell. You see the psychology? Then a $20 pair of socks will seem like an inexpensive add-on most people won’t think twice about.
Tags: fashion, fashion industry, manhattan
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