Your studio is beautiful, and the community you have culminated as a result is active and vibrant. You have a full schedule and talented yoga instructors covering all your classes. The business is doing great, so it only makes sense to sell retail products at your studio as well. This article will explain the pros and cons of retail sales so that you can make the best decision for your business, and offer tips for running a successful retail sales program.
Sounds good? Then let’s get into it!
You need to keep the lights on and pay your staff, so having an additional source of revenue for your business is always a great idea. According to industry experts, retail items should be marked up by about 50%. Even after calculating the cost of buying, storing, and selling the item, the markup is normally still profitable.
Your students are buying mats, water, and clothing related to yoga somewhere. You can help meet a need for your students by selling these items. The same applies to items like headbands, towels, and water before a hot yoga class.
Selling logo clothing items such as t-shirts, tank tops, and hoodies is very popular among studio owners. In addition to generating revenue, the items also increase brand awareness within the community.
There's the obvious drawback of investing time and money into this new venture. You have to shop around, build relationships with vendors, stock and merchandise the products in your studio, add them to your eCommerce store, and then figure out how to sell them. In addition to the upfront cash needed to purchase and set up everything, you must factor in the time commitment as well.
You also run the risk of not being able to sell the products you buy and stock. As a result, studio owners must be careful and strategic when making their decisions about what to stock and sell.
As online retailers like Amazon started to sell the same products you are able to sell in your studio, profit margins have decreased. In order to stay competitive, you might have to take a dip in profit to match prices or make the product unique enough to be worth the sticker price in order to make your desired margins.
Once you've weighed the pros and cons of launching a retail sales program, here are a few tips to help you make it a success.
Sell unique things no one else has. As we said earlier, online retailers can usually sell what you sell, but they can do so for a lower price. You can avoid this by curating your retail products carefully and selling unique products that have special value.
Sell convenience. A second method of avoiding online price competition is to sell items of convenience since these are things students need right away.
Display merchandise in a strategic way. For the greatest success, you’ll want to invest some time and effort into merchandising your retail items both online and in-store. Dusty or dimly lit photos of items won’t sell as well as well-maintained things expertly posed for the perfect photo.
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