When stocking everything from flat screens and tricycles to power drills and diamond rings, it can be tricky to keep your eclectic menagerie from looking like a garage sale. Because pawn businesses don’t always have the same kind of control other retailers do over the types of items and how many products they stock, it can be particularly valuable to them to use time-tested merchandising strategies to highlight their wares.
1. Keep your ducks in a row. Sort, arrange, clean, and repeat. The fun of pawn shopping is hunting for a specific item or getting a great deal, but customers don’t want to have to excavate their purchases from large, dusty bins or piles of random products. You can make things easier for customers by sorting and organizing merchandise into categories and then arranging items so that the nicest products are easiest to see. Keep everything clean and maintained by creating a schedule that will make it easy for you and your staff to sort, arrange, and clean items as needed.
2. Add drama to your shop by investing in attractive LED lighting and quality shelving units and cabinets (especially jewelry). These elements immediately make your store more visually appealing and easier to shop.
3. Re-merchandise daily. As a variety of products move in and out of your store, try to see your store through the eyes of a new customer. Spending just five minutes a day on tidying up displays and filling in empty spaces will help keep your shop looking tip-top.
4. Think seasonally. Merchandise for seasonal or holiday trends by designing displays that target customers’ changing demands. Over Christmas, you might want to draw more attention to tools, sporting goods, and technology. Around Valentine’s Day, you might benefit from handsome jewelry displays (and lighting).
5. Don’t forget the small stuff. Have a rack next to the register that features fun and inexpensive items. This will help you make some easy cash and get rid of those trinkets that might otherwise be cluttering up your shop.
6. Rotate your stock! A common trick parents use to keep kids engaged and the house uncluttered is to rotate toys. You can keep customers engaged and your shop uncluttered by using storage space to rotate merchandise. It is more important to have a shop that is well organized and easy to maneuver than it is to have every single item on the floor at once. If something is not selling, store it and bring it out at a more appropriate time of year. When something does sell, fill in the display with backstock. If someone is looking for something specific but not seeing it in store, pull it from the back and make them feel like a VIP.
7. Make daily deal cards or advertise daily specials to help you move items that are taking up too much real estate, have been there too long, or just as a way to increase customer interest and interaction.
8. Merchandise to your best customer. This tip is near the bottom of our list, but it may be the most important. In a previous blog post, we took a look at ways to attract your best customers, but getting these customers into your store is only half of your goal. You want people to buy. Ask yourself which items make you the most money and which customers buy them. Even if these items are not the bulk of your inventory, you should still emphasize them in your displays.
9. Hire a professional merchandising expert to get you going in the right direction, particularly if merchandising is not your forte. Once an expert lays the right groundwork, you can take the lessons you learned from them and continue to apply them long after the expert is gone and their invoice has been paid.
The bottom line is that having a well merchandised store is worthwhile. It immediately adds value to your products and elicits more respect from customers. It can even enable you to charge more for certain items. With a relatively small investment in time and materials, you can make your pawn shop look like a million bucks and reap ongoing rewards.
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