Cross-merchandising is a time-tested retailing technique that is proven to increases sales. Cross-merchandising is different that upselling or bundling. Upselling is where you persuade a customer to buy a more expensive item than he or she initially intended to buy. Bundling is where you package 2 or more items together typically at a discounted price and get the customer to spend more than he or she would have otherwise. Both upselling and bundling are effective ways to increase revenue in brick-and-mortar stores as well as online. Today, however, we’ll look at a related technique which is cross-selling or cross-merchandising. We’ll specifically look at 5 ideas for using a sunglass display to increase sales through cross-merchandising.
Cross-merchandising is when you display a different product or a product from a different category alongside the product you wish to sell. Because there is a limit to the amount of money a consumer will spend incrementally on an impulse item, cross-merchandising ideas tend to work best with lower-priced items or items that are priced lower than the product which the consumer originally intended to buy. It is much easier for a consumer to rationalize an add-on or incremental sale than it is to spend ten times the amount he or she had originally intended to spend. So it works well when someone is buying an iPhone and decides to get a charger with it rather than the other way around.
Cross-merchandising requires complimentary products to be displayed in close proximity, and it is particularly effective for items like accessories. Consumers are more likely to pull the trigger on cross-merchandised items when the total sale does not increase by more than 20%-30% so being thoughtful about the items you choose for cross-merchandising is important.
Let’s look at 5 ideas for generating incremental revenue for a distributor of sunglasses. Instead of exclusively merchandising sunglasses on a sunglass display, consider the following cross-merchandising ideas that can show you how to sell sunglasses to customers:
1. Sunglass Straps- Sunglass straps are a typical accessory for sunglasses, but 9 out of 10 times when you see a sunglass display, it does not accommodate sunglass straps. This accessory is easy to merchandise since most straps hang on hooks. Adding a corner hook to your display is easy and won’t take away from your main sunglass presentation. We made the cool bamboo displays shown below for a sunglass strap company called Ukes. Imagine how easy it would be to sell Ukes’ sunglass straps along with sunglasses. Depending on the price of your sunglasses it could easily increase the sale by 25% at very attractive margins.
2. Caps- Similar to sunglass straps, caps are frequently worn with sunglasses and are a fashion item often purchased on impulse. You can get a good cap for less than $10 so again, depending on the price of the sunglasses, it could be a great way to increase the revenue per customer while staying within the 20%-30% incremental spending range. The MPM-XP floor display shown below is one of RICH LTD.’s stock multi-product merchandisers. You can see how natural it is to cross-merchandise caps and sunglasses together.
3. Sun Protection Products- There are a variety of sun care and sun protection products that would make sense to cross-merchandise with sunglasses. Sunscreens, lip balms, and related sun protection products are naturals since people buying sunglasses are likely to be out in the sun. Most of these types of products retail for under $10 so they would meet our impulse spending criteria. It would be to add an accessory shelf to the display shown above that would hold any of the Coola products shown below for which we have made freestanding counter displays.
4. Flip Flops- How about flip flops? These might be more of a seasonal item, but flip flops do wear out, and it’s always good to have an extra pair especially if you are heading to the beach. While flip flops vary in price, it’s probably not hard to find a decent pair for around $10. Flip flops are easy to merchandise since they generally just hang on a hook. Imagine taking the flip flops on the display below and hanging them below the sunglasses on the multi-product merchandiser show in the example above. Or better yet hang a row of flip flops below a set of cap pockets to create a one-stop fun shop.
5. Phone Accessories- Phone accessories always make good impulse items. Cell phone chargers, ear buds, cell phone cases and other accessories are frequently lost or forgotten and are often in need of being replaced. They are easily merchandised on hooks, and many of them are in the price range that would work for cross-merchandising. On the display below we show an entire MPM-XP merchandised with these types of accessories, but it’s easy to see how a more limited assortment would work well below a sunglass display panel.
Jim Hollen is the owner and President of RICH LTD. (www.richltd.com), a 35+ year-old California-based point-of-purchase display, retail store fixture, and merchandising solutions firm which has been named among the Top 50 U.S. POP display companies for 9 consecutive years. A former management consultant with McKinsey & Co. and graduate of Stanford Business School, Jim Hollen has served more than 3000 brands and retailers over more than 20 years and has authored nearly 500 blogs and e-Books on a wide range of topics related to POP displays, store fixtures, and retail merchandising.
Jim has been to China more than 50 times and has worked directly with more than 30 factories in Asia across a broad range of material categories, including metal, wood, acrylic, injection molded and vacuum formed plastic, corrugated, glass, LED lighting, digital media player, and more. Jim Hollen also oversees RICH LTD.’s domestic manufacturing operation and has experience manufacturing, sourcing, and importing from numerous Asian countries as well as Vietnam and Mexico.
His experience working with brands and retailers spans more than 25 industries such as food and beverage, apparel, consumer electronics, cosmetics/beauty, sporting goods, automotive, pet, gifts and souvenirs, toys, wine and spirits, home improvement, jewelry, eyewear, footwear, consumer products, mass market retail, specialty retail, convenience stores, and numerous other product/retailer categories.