Summary

Cynthia shares her success story of making $17,500 in just 5 hours through a strategic off-site sale. She explains how she differentiated the sale from her regular store experience and targeted a different demographic. Cynthia also discusses the challenges of not having a POS system and the potential for growth through her website. She plans to reinvest the profits into new merchandise and continue to optimize her sales strategies.

Chapters

| **Timestamp** | **Summary** |
| ————- | ———– |
| 0:00:00 | Introduction to the Retail Academy Live event |
| 0:01:54 | Cynthia’s unexpected promotion success |
| 0:03:08 | Discussion on the benefits of running a sale off-site |
| 0:05:09 | Marketing strategies for a sale |
| 0:06:39 | Ideas for promoting a sale to different demographics |
| 0:08:32 | Importance of having a website and online presence |
| 0:09:54 | Timing and planning of a sale |
| 0:10:35 | Differentiating between regular store experience and a sale |
| 0:11:11 | Future plans for another sale |
| 0:12:43 | Discussion on the cost and benefits of holding inventory |
| [0:14:29] | Discussion about spending $10,000 on bills |
| [0:15:20] | Conversation about the website and its potential |
| [0:16:47] | Focus on a popular brand and potential sales |
| [0:18:17] | Selling shoes on marketplaces for increased reach |
| [0:18:59] | Selling existing inventory to buy more shoes and make profit |
| [0:19:35] | Wrap-up and call to action for listeners |

Quotes

1. **A-(0:00:00)**
> “And what I really liked most was just being able to hear people’s stories and they were so diverse.”

2. **A-(0:01:54)**
> “But I called somebody up to do an audit of their business to help them reclaim. Generally I can reclaim around about half a week.”

3. **C-(0:03:08)**
> “So happy to share that with you. But where does it go with that conversation? Tell us about doing it somewhere that wasn’t your store, that’s actually elizabeth, that was amazing.”

4. **C-(0:05:09)**
> “It was so much better to do it off site. And it gave that market vibe.”

5. **C-(0:06:39)**
> “I actually had a lady come in and say to me, I don’t know about this. And I said, well, it was on the radio, it was in the local paper, it was on Facebook.”

6. **C-(0:08:32)**
> “I want to get rid of it and start with fresh stuff rather than getting more boots.”

7. **C-(0:10:35)**
> “So we sold 17 and a half thousand, so that means we still have, I don’t know, let’s call it 80,000 of stuff that’s aged, possibly.”

8. **C-(0:12:43)**
> “So if you’re saying anything over 90 days, we’re not saying anything at this season.”

9. **C-(0:15:20)**
> “I just literally do not utilize the website like I should because I know it’s not up to date.”

10. **C-(0:18:59)**
> “And so we just made $300,000 by getting rid of this. Exactly. Isn’t that amazing? Making money.”

Show Notes

**About The Guest(s):**
Cynthia is a retail store owner who recently participated in the Retail Academy Live event. She has been in business for several years and has successfully implemented a promotion that generated $17,500 in just five hours.

**Summary:**
Cynthia shares her experience of running a successful promotion that generated $17,500 in just five hours. She explains that she held the promotion off-site due to limited space in her store and the need to clear out aged inventory. By marketing the sale to a different demographic and timing it with a local event, Cynthia was able to attract a large number of customers. She also discusses the importance of differentiating between regular store offerings and heavily discounted promotions to maintain the brand image. Cynthia plans to hold similar promotions in the future to further reduce aged inventory and generate additional revenue.

**Key Takeaways:**
– Holding a promotion off-site can create a different vibe and attract a new demographic of customers.
– Differentiating between regular store offerings and heavily discounted promotions helps maintain the brand image.
– Timing promotions with local events can increase foot traffic and generate more sales.
– Utilizing a point-of-sale (POS) system can provide better inventory management and help track sales.
– Identifying money fountains, such as popular brands or products, can lead to increased sales and profitability.

**Quotes:**
– “It was so much better to do it off-site. It gave that market vibe.” – Cynthia
– “If you can have the clear differentiation between this is the experience we’re building in store, but this is a one-off here.” – Cynthia
– “Every day that you’ve held that and not taken $50, how many times could you reinvest that?” – Cynthia
– “I could probably just sell that brand alone and make $150,000.” – Cynthia

0:00:00 A Hey there and welcome to today’s episode of the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. Well, we are all back in the office after a ridiculously long and informative and exciting TRA live. I have been so blessed to have so many conversations with retailers from all around Australia at our live event. And what I really liked most was just being able to hear people’s stories and they were so diverse. People who’ve been in business 1820 years and then people who have been in business three, four, five years, and being able to put those people together in a room, you could see like the team and I would just sit back and watch how people were interacting together and how they were learning from each other.
0:00:52 A And of course, for us, this was the first time that we have actually managed to have the majority of us in person in one place. And for me, it was the first time I’ve actually met some of the team in real life. Caitlin, if you were working with Caitlin. Caitlin took us shopping in CHADSTON Shopping Center, which is the biggest shopping center in Australia. Joed had us moving around, doing yoga moves.
0:01:20 A We just had a ball. We ate lots of amazing food. And I think for me, the best part was just being able to have those conversations because it’s not something I get a chance to do very often. Now, part of the Retail Academy Live is getting people up onto the stage to talk about their businesses and being able to for me, being able to dissect their businesses and find really easy ways to make money. And I’m going to share with you some of those over the next few podcasts.
0:01:54 A But I called somebody up to do an audit of their business to help them reclaim. Generally I can reclaim around about half a week. And so I called out for volunteers and Cynthia put her hand up. But as she came up to the stage, she said to me, can I talk about my promotion? I was like, sure you can talk about your promotion, Cynthia. OMG. This was not what I was expecting. And so I thought that this was so great that I would share it with you on the podcast.
0:02:32 A And if you are wondering what Cynthia is talking about, how she managed to do this amazing promotion where she made 17 and a half, like, who doesn’t want that? Then you can find all the information that she is talking about inside my nine ways to move Stock Masterclass. So I am going to hand it over to Cynthia now live from the Retail Academy live as she’s going to walk you through her story of how she made 17 and a half. Just 5 hours.
0:03:08 B Hey there and welcome to the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. If you’re looking to get more sales, more customers, master your marketing and ultimately take control of your retail or e commerce business, then you’re in the right place. I’m Selena Knight, a retail growth strategist and multi award winning store owner whose superpower is uncovering exactly what your business requires to move to the next level.
0:03:39 B I’ll provide you with the strategies, the tools, and the insight you need to scale your store. All you need to do is take action. Ready to get started.
0:03:59 C And comes out on the Wednesday afternoon. So most people don’t get it till the Thursday. And then basically I had the Friday. So people who came in and said, oh, you’re having a sale. Whatever they purchased from my store on those couple of days, I sold them at whatever the price it was going to be in the sale. So it might be $20, it might have been $80, whatever. We can share the Dion podcast with you. And there’s actually an Ashley podcast who kind of like Cynthia, took what Dion did and just did all the extra things that Dion did, get a chance to do it. She did 60,000.
0:04:35 C So happy to share that with you. But where does it go with that conversation? Tell us about doing it somewhere that wasn’t your store, that’s actually elizabeth, that was amazing. You couldn’t run it in your store because there was so much stock and there was no room to put it. And then you couldn’t pick a sale that’s 25%. It was just too hard. So it was so much better. It was so much better to do it off site. And it gave that market vibe.
0:05:09 C It was a whole different vibe. And having it all sized out, people just zoning into where they needed to be, grabbing their stuff. I had a couple of ladies that come out. So we’re an hour inland from Rochester, and they travel out. They camp at Bridport, at the caravan park, what have you, and they were like two of my first customers with three boxes each and what have you. And it worked well that I did it in conjunction with the big fiesta at Bridgeport because all the shack owners were down, people booked into airbnbs, and it was just like a bit of word of mouth. I didn’t put posters anywhere else. I mean, in hindsight, because I actually had a lady come in and say to me, I don’t know about this. And I said, well, it was on the radio, it was in the local paper, it was on Facebook.
0:05:56 C And I emailed if I had your details, I emailed you. I actually texted a heap of people at my time, even from my real estate. Use your email service provider. Don’t do that. I don’t want you to have to be doing these kinds of sales. I don’t want you to get to the part where you have $100,000. But when you do it, if you need to some of the things you’re saying to me, some of the things you could have done is you. Could have contacted the airbnb and asked them to email their people. Put that thing in the I had all those ideas, but time went out. But even just a simple poster like I had a lady coming that I buy a little bit of jewelry off and what have you. And she lives in a different area.
0:06:39 C And she said I could put a poster on the new Tomorrow Shop, which is a little whistle stop between Scottsdale and Long system, but it has a lot of outlying people. So when I put the posters in shops in the little towns all around or whatever, didn’t have time for that. I just relied on my hairdresser. I had that word about Cynthia, like people buying in, coming in. And for Dion, she actually took the stock out about week beforehand and so it wasn’t even in the store, so it didn’t affect and no one even knew. She actually said people were coming up into the sale going, oh, I never saw this in the shop. And she was like, I moved it.
0:07:52 C Yeah. I didn’t have the option to be able to do that because I couldn’t get the hold. Plus there’s a daily hole, so you sort of thinking, I’ll just do it. Sure. Did you give the VIPs access early? No, not really. I gave them a heads up early. I just literally wasn’t a time to do that, but they were probably the first ones burning down the door. I never just had a thought in my head. And she was online as well. She gets so I’m a little bit like yourself, I have a website, but it’s manual, so therefore it’s never up to date because I’ve got a reward of style in one of these things here.
0:08:32 C We’ll put in a post system or something, so that’s going to be easier to no, I don’t but I want one because I’m strutting it down. The strategy about having a sale like that off out of your store, it’s actually quite strategic and it’s because it really clearly differentiates between the brand you’re trying to build in store and a really heavily discounted brand. So if you can have something close, it’s ideal. So Dion’s across the road, another client might have had theirs under in a car park.
0:09:12 C Some have been out front. If you can have the clear differentiation between this is the experience we’re building in store, so when you come in store, this is what you should expect, but this is a one off here and the more bargain you can make it I know we’ve had this conversation before. We used to do a once a year sale that we never tell people when it was bring it on them, but we would have stock that we had tried to give away, selling it for $10 out of a box in a plastic bag.
0:09:54 C Because if you are marketing your sale well, you’re marketing to a completely different demographic. You’re marketing to an aspirational demographic that wouldn’t normally shop with you. They don’t care if they’re buying something that’s five seasons ago. So if you can market to that different demographic and country people, if you can time it with something that the men are going to the white people, how long? From conception of idea to an action. Did you have any podcast?
0:10:35 C Two weeks. Yeah, probably two weeks. Yeah, I probably thought about it myself and then I shared the idea with a couple of friends. But, yeah, 29 July had the sale. Good work. All right. And so I agree with what you sort of say about having a sale and not chilling pet wendy’s because people do come to expect. I used to do we have a gym long weekend in Tassie. And on the Monday I used to do, oh, we have an art craft exhibition in that same hall. So there’s usually a lot of people milling around in the street. And I used to do on that Monday, for 4 hours, a half price.
0:11:11 C Half price of everything. But then people can’t expect that you just wait until you can pay full price. So I stopped doing that. So I do have plans for another one of those, but everyone’s the next one. But it won’t be actually for about eight months time because that seaside turn up report has a massive big end of summer party on the hello. Did anyone else hear that? Like, she just said that there’s these other things.
0:11:36 C So we sold 17 and a half thousand, so that means we still have, I don’t know, let’s call it 80,000 of stuff that’s aged, possibly. Yeah. Why would you wait another eight? I’m not waiting another 18 months because I was 1516, whatever that is. Thursday, Friday, this month, a whole heap of businesses in our town having a street market type of thing sale, and that’s when the next lot is going to go out, basically, it’ll be a little bit more summery. And what’s our target for that one?
0:12:07 C No, it won’t be as big as that, because it physically can’t be. I just don’t have it in mind yet. Won’t be as big as that. But I’ll be happy to roll five grand in that. Did she get rid of a lot of stuff that day? Yes, I did. She’s still got $80,000 worth. Right, so we still have $80,000 tied up when I say that day. So if you’re saying anything over 90 days, we’re not saying anything at this season.
0:12:43 C Yes, exactly. What cost? No, at what cost? In the sense that if you had sold them earlier and bought some new merchandise that is selling. Yeah, but see, because we indent, I want to get my set amount with my business. I want to get rid of it and start with fresh stuff rather than getting more boots. And the other thing which has made you is literally the stuff I bought initially this season that didn’t sell.
0:13:15 C I drank that out beginning of the season next year. Oh, this new absolutely. Get more benefit out of the second year. You do understand the trend at the moment, but as soon as that but in the meantime, every day that you’ve held that and not taken $50, how many times could you reinvest that? $50? Totally understand what we’re saying, but you’re not going to listen to me. Is there any more questions for Cynthia? She’s actually just taken part of my next session.
0:13:52 C I was going to tell you about Neon, and she said, if you haven’t had Dion before all right. POS. Do you think not having a POS was one of the key reasons that you had so much atrium? Because you weren’t running reports? Possibly, and I don’t usually because I’m not confident that it’s up to date. And 100% of the time, I don’t sort of what’s your website? Shopify. Just yeah, shopify. Yeah, shopify. POS.
0:14:29 C You’ve got a half $1,000. Yeah. This is the other thing. When you did the tomorrow we’re going to talk about, but when you did the sale and you said ten grand, did you have any idea what you were going to spend the $10,000 on? Bills. Is that much you needed to pay the bills? Yes. Okay. Probably. Okay, so once again, can we see how we can just reverse engineer you, work out how much the hardware is going to be? Yes. It’s not much, but the other thing is the database doesn’t lead to being technological, so the basis of my problem is not paying for or getting the hardware, getting someone to show me how to get it started, what have you. And I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. You’re clearly a smart label.
0:15:20 C We can all give you that one. All right. How much do you think not having a POS would cost you? I’m kind of going with 100 grand. Yeah, it definitely would have done. I just literally do not utilize the website like I should because I know it’s not up to date. Okay, so do you have a website? Yeah. Does it make any money at the moment? It gets a hit every now and then. You said is anyone else you tell? Shoes like shisha? No.
0:15:52 C Okay. What do you think the website should turn over? Okay, let me get I’ll just come in. Don’t ask me questions. Okay. That’s the answer. You can start there. Okay. 25%. Oh, you know, that’s why my kids wanted the number. That’s why I whispered it in your dream. All right, so we’ve just $150,000 for investing a small amount of time and money to get the POS, which is all yes. Okay. Do we have any money fountains? Do we have things that consistently sell that maybe you sell out?
0:16:47 C I have one brand that I do really well with, and I do actually stock heavily, which is Cabello cabello shoes so that they popular about. And I’m pretty sure if I have those, they are the ones I’m probably trying on the website the most. But then all the other ones are out. So how much more money do you think you could make? Do you keep them in stock or is it just a sales channel? That’s the problem.
0:17:16 C No, you have to indent them. Just say, for example, just has two of each size made, not probably all sizes. How much do you think you can sell? Money has got a problem. Money has got a problem. I could probably just that brain alone. It’s a popular brain. And it’s one that probably hasn’t spread itself too, haven’t you? It’s one that probably hasn’t spread itself too thin. You look up safe way you can find them on the katie’s website and here, there anywhere else. Whereas kanala tends to be a little bit more independent.
0:18:17 C We do know that the katie’s websites are now marketplaces. So that’s your target demographic. That’s one of those places you could be selling it is now. Yeah, I had all those. Yeah, it is. Thank you very much. So they have lots of sites now in our marketplace. All right. So you can sell them those. All right. So we currently have around $80,000 worth of age inventory. If we sell it, we could have the money to buy the extra shoes. Absolutely.
0:18:59 C And make 150. And then we could also do this. And so we just made $300,000 by getting rid of this. Exactly. Isn’t that amazing? Making money. I realized your figures, they were better. Yours aren’t too bad. I’m sure that there’s more in there that we don’t know about, but I think thank you, Cynthia.
0:19:35 B So that’s a wrap. I’d love to hear what insight you’ve gotten from this episode and how you’re going to put it into action. If you’re a social kind of person, follow me at the selena knight and make sure to leave a comment and let me know. And if this episode made you think a little bit differently or gave you some inspiration or perhaps gave you the kick that you needed to take action, then please take a couple of minutes to leave me a review.
0:20:04 B On your platform of choice. Because the more reviews the show gets, the more independent retail and ecommerce stores just like yours, that we can help to scale. And when that happens, it’s a win for you, a win for your community, and a win for your customers. I’ll see you on the next episode.