When a retail company gets going, one of the most important questions to answer consummately is, of course, what to stock or what type of business to offer to customers. This is true of both brick-and-mortar retail outlets and ecommerce sites alike.
How specific the answer to this question is will depend upon what type of business is being set up. For example, if you are setting up a physical coffee house, then there’s one type of product which, obviously, you should be selling. If you are starting a convenience store, on the other hand, then deciding on inventory can be a much bigger job.
Another questionis whether you are going to specialize in high-end products or low-cost conveniences – or you could be selling a mixture of both. Selling both high-end products (usually in smaller numbers but for higher prices) or low-cost products (which are typically purchased on a whim or when a customer is in a pinch) can be a winning business move too.
High-End Versus Low-Cost
Another particularly important thing to remember is that your high-end and low-cost products will be marketed very differently. With the high-end products, it is all about quality and longevity justifying the price tag. Furthermore, you also need to garner a reputation as being a specialist in these types of products, something which you can by selling several of themrather than just one or two.
To take a hypothetical example, a convenience store that inexplicably also sells IT products or vacuum cleanersis unlikely to see much business with these productssimply because nobody goes to a convenience store specifically to buy a computer keyboard or the latest Dyson. Moreover, they are unlikely to buy such products on a whim when they happen to see them there.
Low-cost products have, theoretically, a much broader appeal. Nevertheless, this only applies if they are genuinely useful and desirableand do not have a reputation for being cheap and, well, a bit rubbish.
Olympic Eyewear, a women’s wholesale sunglasses distributor, make the case for sunglasses as the ideal low-cost product that is sure to sell well. This is because sunglasses are not cheap because of inferior quality (most people know that expensive sunglasses are expensive because of the brand prestige and celebrity endorsements), and it can be incredibly useful to come across a rack of sunglasses in convenience store. If they are needed in a pinch or if the customer is attracted by the styles, they can pick up a few pairs as an impulse buy and be assured of quality.
Sunglasses are undoubtedly a great example of a winning low-cost product for almost any business. But how should you go about selling high-end products?
High-End Product Sales Advice
As mentioned, you need to garner a reputation for being something of a specialist in the high-end products you supply. This doesn’t mean you absolutely need to be a cleaning product specialist to shift a vacuum cleaner butif you’re not, it’s very wise to limit the diversity of your high-end products.
If you offer amixture of low-cost and high-end, and your high-end products are only of one type, then it is much more likely customers will come to associate your company with that particular productand thereby trust you to provide quality.
You will not have to do this, however, if you make yourself a specialist in a particular type of high-end product and offer a diversity of these from a store which is associated with that product type.
In summary, low-cost products are great for general inventory, and high-end products require a bit more of a reputation.
