Yesterday, I spent pretty much the entire day receiving doo-dads and trinkets. Boxes and boxes of them piled high in the back room needed to be entered in the computer, priced, and organized. The beauty of my job is that I have a partner who loves to set up these sidelines, so I just get them ready.
Sidelines have become a bigger part of the store’s inventory since we moved to our new location five years ago and finally had space for them. Every year we carry just a few more than we did the year before. The margin for these continues to best that of books and lately, there have been specials to help offset shipping which can be exorbitant.
This year, I’ve noticed that people have already begun buying holiday presents, including stocking stuffers. This amazes me. It’s barely November and some folks are already done with their Christmas shopping. If I bought a stocking now, there would be no way I’d remember where I’d hidden it come Christmas Eve. More power to the folks who plan that far ahead.
We’ve never had our doo-dads out this early, and it feels good. As I was putting them on the table and pricing them, co-workers came over and started playing with them. The best way to sell something is to be enthusiastic about it yourself. And literally within moments, someone had purchased a stocking stuffer.
While we’ll always be a bookstore, there is something really fun about carrying sidelines. They increase our sales margin, they can make the store seem more lively. and, more importantly, they’re fun.
We sell a parrot pen that’s a voice recorder. Ask my staff how many times between now and Christmas they’ll hear me sing, “Happy holidays” into the pen to demonstrate how much fun they are and they’ll say about a hundred. But just about every time I do that, someone buys a pen, and that makes for a very happy holiday.