Gift Focus Magazine - Wholesale gifts for trade buyers

Back to Articles

Customer relations

In an increasingly competitive market, running an event within your retail space is a great way to ensure that you have an edge over your competitors, and to build up a genuine rapport with your customers.

Organise your time
To run a successful event, advance planning is absolutely essential. Deciding on a theme may make the planning easier, as it provides a "hook" for you to place all the details of the event around. The theme may be dictated by the season - Christmas events, often in the form of a late night opening evening, are an increasingly popular option. Furthermore, they are an almost fail-safe way of ensuring that you get your customers into the festive spirit, and entice them to spend more money! If you are new to staging events within your business, this type of event might be a good starting point. A simple late night opening, with a few extra gestures to your customers, such as serving mince pies or mulled wine, may be a good way for you to build up your confidence for putting on further events.

As an alternative to a seasonal theme, an event may be themed around a specific product. Victoria Rose at Mulberry Hall in York suggests that a "product themed" event can really enhance your business by drawing attention to the exclusivity of your stock. "We usually run three or four events per year, the most recent being a Lladro signing event," reveals Rose. "This took place on a Saturday afternoon, when a member of the Lladro family came over from Spain and signed any Lladro piece purchased on the day. We have also hosted an Alessi event based on the last four decades of design and a Royal Crown Derby evening where we launched our new limited edition Mulberry Hall products."

Go the extra mile
In order to make your event that bit more special, try to include some sort of activity or eye-catching display for the customers. Generally, you will find that suppliers are very happy to come along for an evening to promote their product. However, remember that it is important to give them plenty of notice about the event - when they agree to appear, you will need time to publicise their appearance properly. "The most popular events are where the customers feel they are getting 'something for nothing' whether it be meeting Emma Bridgewater, listening to history of design from Alessi or purchasing a limited edition piece which is only available on that particular day," says Rose. "The customers will probably already be familiar with the products they are buying but generally love to learn more. We often have demonstrations in store, such as hand painting, cooking or modelling, and it really it can enhance the value of the products."

Making your loyal customers feel special is a key to running a successful event. "A really good event should be interesting and "of the moment". It does need to be something that is not happening elsewhere. Good food and wine always helps and making the customers feel special is imperative. At our events we provide good wine and sometimes champagne. "

"Customers don't want to see the same event happening in the next door town," says Rose. "The paybacks are that hopefully the customers remember that they've had a good time, been well looked after and have bought something special that they can't buy easily anywhere else. It means that they will keep coming back to you."

Planned carefully and creatively, running an event can be great fun, as well as highly profitable to your retail business. Cotswold Trading has three shops in Broadway, including a gift and homewares store, a funky outdoor clothing store and a gift and gadget store. Last year the company hosted, among others, a fabulously successful 10th birthday party. "We have had really positive feedback from lots of the events we have had, especially the birthday party," reveals store manager, Kath Mahon. "People even sent us Thank You letters after that!" She continues: "The time and thought we put into it paid off. It generated a huge amount of good will amongst our customers, and also our takings were over four times what we would have taken on a normal day."

Clearly, special events can help to keep customers loyal by generating good will and ensuring that you have made them feel special and exclusive enough to keep coming back for more.

September/October 2010
issue 61
available now