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CORONAVIRUS DISCUSSION 😷

How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your gift shop. Has your gift shop closed or reduced hours? What about volunteers? Are you sanitizing product? If your hospital does close the gift shop will they deploy you to another department? Are you able to work from home?

You will need to think creatively and work collaboratively to meet your customers’ every day needs in this new environment. And, you will need to do everything you can to make their shopping experience seamless and hassle free, even in the face of stress and anxiety. Engage, listen, learn, ask questions, and build trust. Help your team to be comfortable in uncomfortable times.

💮CALENDAR 💮

CORONAVIRUS: Check conference and market websites regularly for cancellations or schedule changes.

GIFT MARKETS

STATE AUXILIARY CONFERENCES

Retailers share how they’re coping with COVID-19

from Gifts & Dec  / Mar 16, 2020

Recent survey findings show that, in light of the coronavirus pandemic, retailers expect to feel the pinch when it comes to sales and revenue. Understandably, the coronavirus has the whole world feeling on edge and as the Trump administration has now declared the pandemic a national emergency, concern continues to grow. Nevertheless, independent retailers are facing the crisis as best they can, even as they admit to fears of the unknown. As some bigger chains are cutting back on hours or facing severe shortages on basic essentials, many small retailers are comforting their communities now more than ever.

“The scary thing about this situation is that we don’t know when it will end.”  Carol Schroeder, Orange Tree Imports, Madison, WI.  All of our locally owned businesses, including Orange Tree Imports, are struggling to determine the best course of action. We have temporarily suspended our Cooking School class and cancelled our upcoming Ukrainian Egg Art Demonstration. We’ve removed testers from our bath and body area, and of course, we’re on board with hand washing and sanitizing.  Read more…

January retail sales grew 2.7% over last year

from museums&MORE  / Feb 18, 2020

Retail sales in January increased 0.2% seasonally adjusted over December and were up 2.7% unadjusted year-over-year, the National Retail Federation (NRF) said. The numbers exclude automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants.

“The strength of consumer spending continues to be the anchor of the current economic expansion,” said Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist with NRF. “January’s retail sales results reflect a confident consumer supported by solid wage growth and job gains. While the business sector continues to weigh significant uncertainties, consumers are providing staying power for U.S. economic growth. We are starting the year on a strong footing.

January’s results build on increases of 0.3% month-over-month and 6.3% year-over-year in December. As of January, the three-month moving average was up 3.5% over the same period a year ago, compared with 3.9% in December.

NRF’s numbers are based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which said that overall January sales – including auto dealers, gas stations and restaurants – were up 0.3% seasonally adjusted from December and up 4.4% unadjusted year-over-year.

Spring into action now for coming holidays

March 30: National Doctor’s Day

National Doctor’s Day is a day celebrated to recognize the contributions of physicians to individual lives and communities. Show appreciation to doctors with a complimentary chocolate bar or a 20% off discount certificate! Doctors do not frequent hospital gift shops often so this might be a way to make new friends.

April 12: Easter  

Place an announcement in the hospital newsletter about your shop’s Easter merchandise. Stir up excitement – begin a raffle for a large plush Easter bunny.

Arrange with your shop’s florist to increase flower orders for Easter and Mother’s Day. Ask them to prepare some special blooming bulb plants in baskets for those two important special occasions. Order containers of cut daffodils and tulips (to sell by the stem).

April 22: Administrative Professionals Day

Arrange with your florist to have containers of pale pink and yellow carnations and ferns to sell for Administrative Professionals Day. 

April 19-25: National Healthcare Volunteer Week

One way to thank volunteers is to give them perspective about what they’re doing. Sometimes volunteers are given mundane tasks. No matter what they’re doing, let your volunteer know the larger context — not just what they’re doing, but why they’re doing it – and show that you respect them and appreciate their work.

Provide food for your volunteers as they work. Back in college, I always liked someone better when they gave me food. The same applies to volunteers. It keeps them energized and shows that you care. (Remember to mark food that is vegetarian and vegan!)

Check in with your volunteers located in the back room or storage ares regularly. If they’re looking tired, give them a break. If they’re looking bored, offer them a different task.

Take time to interact with your volunteers, not just to thank them for their work, but also to get to know them personally.

Submit feature volunteer stories to your hospital newsletter or publication. Take 15 minutes out of your schedule to interview them personally. You and the volunteer are winners here — the volunteer gets to tell their story, and you get feedback as well as some great material that you can use for volunteer recruitment.

Give your volunteers actual awards. Nominate them for awards such as “Volunteer of the Month.” You can even get creative and have multiple categories, such as “Most Inspirational,” “Most Enthusiastic,” etc.

Sometimes the best way to show you appreciate your volunteers is the old fashioned way — send them a simple handwritten thank you card. In the age of email and social media, the handwritten letter is special. Bonus points to personalize the message, such as thanking them for a specific task they did during their time volunteering.

May 6: National Nurses Day

Nurses Day is always May 6. A few days prior, offer a 30% OFF NURSES DAY SALE just for nurses. Send an email to the nursing department Chair or HR Director asking if they would email the sale to their nurses.  Get the custom designed SIGNAGE for NATIONAL NURSES DAY in the 12-Month Action Plan here. 

May 10: Mother’s Day

Now is the time to purchase fall women’s sportswear, baby apparel and accessories now. Begin promoting golf, baseball and other sport and team-like merchandise.

The stockroom door

Your stockroom doors work only one way—and that way is OUT! When new merchandise arrives, check it in, price it and get it into the shop. Hopefully, it will never return to the stockroom again, because there’s no customers or cash register there!

Why inventory turn is so important

That’s a fair – and an important – question. Inventory turnover is a measure of the number of times your inventory is sold within a period of time, usually a year. There are a number of ways to determine your inventory turn figure, but the easiest way is to simply divide your previous year’s total retail sales by your year ending inventory at retail value.

Shops with a better turn rate achieve that rate because they closely control their inventory.

They are empathic about delivery dates so that the product arrives at the store when it needs to be there. And they are pit bulls about managing the inventory on hand and about reducing the selling price when necessary to recoup as much of their investment as possible. What’s Your Inventory Turn?

Source: Kizer & Bender’s Retail Adventures

Rich Kizer and Georganne Bender of Kizer & Bender are consumer anthropologists, consultants, designers, keynote speakers, and who have helped tens of thousands of businesses in the retail, creative, restaurant, healthcare, hospitality, collegiate, travel, beauty, funeral, tech, auto, sales, and service industries since 1990.

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What are four things you do
when you first arrive
at your gift shop each day?

Redlands Community Hospital, Redlands, CA

We’re Open! Gift Shop Hours

How many ‘open shop hours’ per week are required to make $500 per square feet?

Shop hours are crucial to a shop’s success. Limiting shop hours limits sales and service to customers. Expanded shop hours increase sales and services. Post the shop hours at the entrance of the shop and include them in the Patient Handbook and New Employee Manual.

Ensure that shop hours are maintained with no interruption of service.

Hospital gift shops have a potential customer each hour of the day 365 days a year!

There is often a scarcity of volunteers to work evenings and weekends, so part-time paid employees may be needed to work those shifts.

Best practices for plush displays 🧸

Do not stack as much plush as possible into one area. Create a display, not a mound of product!

Group by color or category of character or animal. For example, group all farm animals together, all Disney together, all jungle animals together. Display musical plush in the baby department.

Internal Revenue Code

Hospital gift shops qualify as an unrelated business under Revenue Ruling: 69:267, Section 513 of the Internal Revenue Code. Five principles must be followed to help reinforce the tax-exempt character of the shop.

1. The shop provides a service to its patrons: patients, visitors and employees.
2. All profits are donated to the hospital.
3. Its purpose is to provide merchandise that will improve the physical comfort and mental well-being of patients, visitors and employees.
4. The shop keeps employees on the premise throughout the day, thus increasing the hospitals efficiency.
5. A substantial amount of the work must be performed without compensation.

Five ways to be a better leader

by By Nicole Leinbach Reyhle / Summer 2016

Five ways to improve managing and leading employees

There is a saying in life that the “days are busy but the years are short” and when it comes to retail, this is absolutely the truth. After all, how often have years flown by and you’ve looked back only to regret how you managed your employees or other store responsibilities you had hoped to improve?

With employees essentially your brand ambassadors, there’s no better time than now to work towards making their roles stronger and your employee management strengthen, as well. To help, consider these five tips:

Evaluate your employee scenario

Ask yourself this straightforward question — and give yourself an honest answer: Are you satisfied with the performance of your employees?

While it’s possible some employees will likely stand out among others for their positive attributes, it’s also likely many others will stand out for just the opposite of reasons. Keeping this in mind, analyze your entire staff and identify the strengths, weaknesses and windows of opportunities that you would like to improve. This first step can help lead you to the many others that will follow as you begin your journey to strengthen your employee team.

Create an evaluation checklist

When you’re analyzing your employees and their performance, it’s important to be consistent in evaluating each employee against the same criteria. Keeping this in mind, having a checklist — or evaluation form — to work off of can help you review each individual employee with the same standards and expectations as all others. Ranking skills and store responsibilities on a scale of 1 to 5 provides a good baseline, with 1 being poor performance, 2 offering below average, 3 identifying average, 4 recognized as above average and 5 being outstanding.

As you begin to create your checklist, consider including points that range from store operations to customer service to merchandising and marketing to social media. Any and all responsibilities in your store should be included, as well as other key details such as being on time to work.

Schedule one-on-one reviews

Once your checklist is completed and your evaluations have been filled out, it’s important to schedule a one-on-one review with each employee to deliver your findings. Additionally, take this opportunity to discuss their strengths and weaknesses as well as communicate store goals, expectations, employee responsibilities and more. You should allow for time that would welcome your employee to share their own thoughts, whether it’s in direct response to your review or about their employment or store concerns in general. Finally, make sure your tone if positive while also enforcing the standards you have set for your business. At the very least, these should be done annually. Ideally, however, these would be completed quarterly or bi-annually.

Deliver an all-store team meeting

Create a time that brings everyone together when the store is not open for business. During this experience, you should formally roll out store expectations — particularly if this is something you have never previously done. To help, introducing an employee manual is a great idea. For those less interested in a formal manual, consider a “ten best” list that shares the ten things your store absolutely wants to see from every employee… then post this list in a common area that employees will see it and be reminded of it every time they work (away from customers, of course). The main goal — no matter what path you choose to take here — is to create a team morale that is positive and uplifting while offering employees leadership and direction for them to follow while working in your store. Teamwork should be emphasized, as well, and any sales goals that you have in place should also be identified.

Set daily goals

When managing employees, it’s vital to offer goals that employees can easily access and understand. Saying “we want to have our best year yet” sounds great, but it doesn’t offer clear direction on how to do this. Combining this annual goal with daily goals can help you reach your expectations. Using your point of sale and other data from previous sales years, identify daily sales goals that your employees are aware of. Additionally, set other goals each day that may include merchandising a specific area, sending out customer thank you notes and managing store operations in general. Combined, these daily goals will help make for productive days and ultimately, help you reach the big picture goals you have in place for your business.

A final thought

When leading employees, be sure to consider the leadership experience that they are experiencing. Pausing to reflect on your own leadership can help you better understand some of your employee behaviors. Aim to shape your own leadership in a direction that you and your employees can both be proud of. As a result, your store, employees and yourself will benefit, helping to increase sales and create a more dynamic working environment. 

Nicole Leinbach Reyhle is the founder and publisher of Retail Minded, as well as the co-founder of the Independent Retailer Conference. She is the author of “Retail 101: The Guide to Managing and Marketing Your Retail Business” from McGraw-Hill and writes a regular column for Forbes. Visit www.retailminded.com, or follow @RetailMinded on Twitter and Facebook.com/RetailMinded.

SOURCE: museums&MORE

DISCUSSION

FROM CINDY

Advantages of the Retail Method of Inventory Valuation
The money your customer pays at point of purchase is the retail price. The retail sales figures are the retail value of the inventory. The retail price has the profit built into it and profit occurs when an item is sold (at retail)

1. 1. Maintaining inventory figures ‘at retail’ forces the you, the retailer, to ‘think retail’.
   2. Financial statements ‘at retail’ are essential to good financial planning. Frequent calculations at both cost and retail information allows the retailer to adjust quickly to changing conditions
   3. Physical inventories taken at retail prices eliminate the costly, time-consuming job of decoding cost prices. Recording physical inventory at retail prices greatly simplifies the process and encourages a more frequent physical count of inventory.
   4. The retail method facilitates planning and control of a department or category. Sales, purchases, inventories, and price-change information are recorded by department or category and can be used to evaluate each department’’s performance.
   5. By providing a ‘book’ or Point of Sale figure for what your inventory should be on hand, the retail method allows the retailer to determine shortages each time a physical inventory is taken.

The ‘retail method’ requires continuous recording of all transactions which change the unit status of the inventory. A running total must be kept by continuously recording all merchandise data. A Point of Sale system will automatically accomplish that for you!

SHOP YOUR OWN SHOP

Q. Have you shopped your own shop recently? The other night I was on my way out, purse in hand, when a friend walked into the store to browse.  I walked back in and “shopped” with her through her eyes. If you are like me, all I can see when surveying the floor is what needs to be done, what is missing, what needs dusting, etc. But shopping as the customer was a pleasant surprise. I enjoyed admiring and looking at things as much as she did and it was really fun!  It was a lesson to me  – after a harried day behind the scenes, I actually left feeling very good. I realized the pleasant experience that our shop offers to hospital guests and employees. I am going to walk out and come back in wearing a consumer hat more often!  – A shop manager. 228 beds. 3/10/20

CURTAIL DEEP-DISCOUNT CUSTOMERS

Q. I assist the director of volunteer services in managing three hospital gift shops. Our largest shop at our biggest campus does quite well. We have a shop at a sister hospital that we buy for and are waiting to see how the first year went. We also have a small shop at our long-term care and rehab facility. We struggle with staffing (all volunteer) as it’s a smaller shop and is on the opposite side of town from where many of the volunteers live. Most of the customers at that location also like to “wait things out” when it comes to buying product. They will not buy it until it is deeply discounted and then complain when the merchandise isn’t changed often. We are at a loss as to what to do with this particular shop. Does anyone have any suggestions? – Shea Parazine, Volunteer Services Specialist, The Shops at Unity Health, White County Medical Center, Searcy, AR. 193 beds. 3/11/20

FROM CINDY
Sounds like hospital employees have been trained to wait for markdowns so they can get it cheaper. I suggest you don’t reduce markdowns so soon, and see who out-waits who! Of course, the danger of waiting too long is that the shop may get stuck with too much aging merchandise. That is the “just in case”  philosophy.

As retailers, we never want to disappoint the customer. We can’t bear to hear a customer say they couldn’t find what they were looking for in our shop. On the other hand, we can’t carry everything in very limited floor space. Unfortunately, some shops carry huge inventories just in case that one customer comes in. That’s called ‘just in case’ thinking and buying and it simply doesn’t work! What happens if that one customer never comes in? You now have merchandise that feels old and stale….and may never sell.

I too am a small community hospital and would love to get with someone to buy marked down items from. It you don’t mind sharing some information please email me. – Rhonda Hernandez. 2/25/20

I am also a small community hospital and the benefit of that is I can buy Simply Noelle marked down items and most of my customers don’t even notice it’s “last seasons” merchandise. Excellent quality at an excellent price. – Anonymous. 2/17/20

Mountain Mamas might be a good option for spring/summer clothing. – Teri Nixon. 2/16/20

PRICE OF STANDARD CANDY BAR

Q. What is everyone is charging for a standard candy bar? I sure don’t want our hospital employees thinking we are scamming them. – Sandy Palmer, Harrison Valley. 311 beds. 12/28/19

$1.14 no tax. Cost is about $.67 so we’re not making a large profit at all but it keeps the employee’s coming back everyday for their “fix” :) – Anonymous. 2/17/20
We charge $1.29. – Lisa Burney. 1/17/20
$1.25! Customers are seeing the same price at the grocery stores. – Karen. 1/17/20
$1.15. With tax, it is $1.25.  – Melodie Christal. 1/16/20
$1.25 includes tax. – Kathryn Main

NOVEMBER SALES DOWN?

Q. I would like to know if anyone was down in sales for November? Our sales were down about $6,000 year over year. In my area, a lot of the stores had their Christmas items on sale at 50% off the second week of November which I believe had a lot to do with it. That, the weather in my area, and a couple of internal changes were all culprits.  I was just curious if anyone else was down due to the shortened holiday season with Thanksgiving being a week later.  – Kim DeBord, Marketplace Manager, Riverside Medical Center, Kankakee, IL. 325 beds. 12/4/19

The last several years, we’ve ordered less and less Xmas ornaments and home decor. One of my crafters doesn’t even make it anymore. Instead carry some esp for kids and make sure it’s unique…. but focus more on items that will sell even after Xmas. You’ll feel less pressure. – Elaine. 2/15/20

Our November sales were significantly down also, and I think Carol has a point about Thanksgiving being later affecting that. Luckily we had a better December which made up for it and helped our overall year’s total. – Vicki Holcombe. 1/16/20

My November sales are also down but we need to keep in mind that Thanksgiving was a week later this year and Thanksgiving really does kick off the Holiday Season. I am expecting to make up the difference in December and we are off to a stronger start than last year. I think it is too soon to tell how are this year’s Holiday Season will end up. Thanks for another great newsletter! I hope everyone has a very successful Holiday Season. – Carol A Colpitts, Gift Shop Manager/Buyer, Milford Regional Medical Center, Milford, MA. 116 beds. 12/8/19

A SUCCESSFUL TOTE SALE

Something that worked extremely well for us was a Tote Sale. I bought holiday totes from Burton & Burton for $1.66 each, priced them at $4.99 which is a 66.73% mark-up. The promotion is, buy a tote at $4.99 and anything you can get in the tote is 25% off.  And our pitch is “We can make anything fit in a tote.” We sold out of the totes in 2 days and I bought a lot of them.  I do a tote sale two times a year and my customers/employees can’t wait for it. Thank you so much and happy holidays. – Kim DeBord, Marketplace Manager, Riverside Medical Center, Kankakee, IL. 325 beds. 12/4/19

Just an FYI – if you’re buying something at a cost of $1.66 and selling it for $4.99, that is a 200% markup and a 67% gross margin….– Curt. 2/1/20

I tried this idea, and loved it. Our customers were loving it as well. Thanks for such a great idea. – Lisa Burney. 1/17/20

TURBAN & GREETING CARD VENDORS

We have purchased basic turbans for chemo patients for years from Betmar and a lesser expensive style from Kelli’s. We also recently started carrying a line of greeting cards called Kimo Kards. We have received a lot of positive feed back on these from our customers. – Sandy White, Shop Manager. 12/25/19

We carry a large selection of turbans and other headwear from Hats with Heart. They are great to work with. – Anonymous. 1/15/20