I have some hard-to-shift old stock. What should I do?

Ensure your “quit list” is acted on as fast as possible to make way for your new stock arrivals.

Set a goal as to when you want all quit stock cleared.

Make sure the markdown is enticing enough (no one is going to accept 20% on something they don’t want anyway) so make sure you’ve discounted by 35%-50% off, or more, depending on how desperate you are to move the goods.

Try not to lose money when you take markdowns. And clearly mark the “sales” area with signs.

To avoid upsetting the ACCC, ensure that “post-Christmas” specials are on sale for two weeks.

It isn’t unusual to find that some goods haven’t sold because of where they are placed. Moving goods around has, on occasion, made a slow seller into a good, if not great, seller.

In retail stores, different things sell better at different times in different places.

Some spots are dead for some items at a particular time; the same spot may be a hot spot for others at another time.

Because the layouts of stores differ, what is a hot spot for one store may not be a hot spot for another.

Hence, rearranging merchandise may lessen the number of things that need to be put on sale.

Another plus factor for moving items around is that handling items bring to mind goods that, because they have been in one place for such a long time, have become part of the fixtures.

One aspect of having leftovers is that they are treated like leftovers. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes to find a store’s leftover area.

This melange of items is not a way of showing off the items to their best advantage – something every store owes to the goods they buy.

Grouping items from various suppliers or lines can be by design, colour, use, shape, price, material, or a combination of any two themes.

Pulling things into groups separated by space makes each group important.

Grouping is best when there are groups of five items rather than having one group of 40 items or 40 individual items.

As items are sold out of a group, the group can be reorganised.

When the merchandise is in one big group, nothing is important because customers’ eyes get lost in the multitude of variety.

Trying to give each item its individual space also means that because all are important, no one is more important than the others.

Making groups with a common theme abates the leftover look.

Try these and watch your stock move!