Kole Imports Blog

I know it’s still cold outside and you’re not thinking about going to the beach and playing in the sand.  We had some huge waves at the beach here last week, but the water was freezing, and there weren’t any kids building sand castles. 

That being said, it pays to plan ahead, and that’s what we’re doing.  We just received a large shipment of plastic beach pails and sand toys, and we’ll be sold out of them by the first week of March, when we’ll be showing our spring and summer merchandise at the ASD Las Vegas Wholesale Merchandise Show (LVCC, South Hall, Upper Level, Booths L600 – L623, Feb 28 – March 3).  If you sell beach toys, order early so you’ll be ready for the warm weather.  Give us a call at 800-874-7766 or go to www.koleimports.com to order.  Here are a few pictures.

Beach Pail # SK201Sand Castle Mold # SK202Beach Toy Sand Shovel # SK203

We’ll be in Houston Texas February 2 through 4.  Come see all of our newest wholesale merchandise and closeouts.  Details are below.   If you can’t make it to Houston, make plans to see us in Las Vegas February 28 through March 3.

Houston Merchandise Show

We’ve learned a lot in our 25 years as a wholesaler.  Here are 25 ways you can improve your store to increase sales and have happier customers.

1) Clean up!  Take an objective look at your store and ask yourself if any part of it could be cleaner.  Customers feel better in a clean store than in one that’s dirty.  Be sure you also look at the outside of your store.

2) Light it up!  Is your store too dark?  Make sure there’s adequate lighting for people to know what they’re buying.  If you’re buying new bulbs, you could look for more efficient ones and save some money on electricity as well.

3) Treat your customers like people!  Be nice.  Have conversations with them.  If they have kids with them, say something nice to the children as well.  You’ll be happier at work, and people will want to come see you again.

4) Treat your employees like people!  Always be friendly to your employees on the retail floor, and if it is necessary to take disciplinary action, don’t do it where customers can’t see or hear you.  I hope that you like your employees, but whether or not you do, the customers will feel better shopping in your store if it looks like you’re all happy together.

4) Good music!  Don’t just play music you like.  Play music your customers like.  And don’t play it too loud.

5) Closeouts!  Unique, good-quality closeout items sell well, and they’ll keep customers coming back to see what’s new.

6) Seasonal Items!  Make sure you have appropriate items for the current season.  Consider holidays, sports and current weather conditions.

7) Targeted merchandise!  Talk to your customers.  Ask them what sorts of things they’d like to see in your store.  You could even have a suggestion box.

8  Complaints!  Handle customer complaints quickly and politely. If people feel like you’re really working to make things right, they’ll keep shopping with you.  Don’t fight with them.

9) Dead merchandise!  Identify slow-moving items and take action. Maybe they need to be in a more visible location.  Maybe the customers don’t like the items.  Move them or remove them and replace them with something better.  Be aware of how your merchandise sells, and keep adjusting the sales floor to make it sell faster

10) Displays!  Look around and see how your items are displayed, and consider moving items around, grouping them together, or putting up a sign to show people where they are.

11) Suggestions! Ask your employees for suggestions to improve the store.  There’s a good chance they see something you don’t see which would improve your business.

12) Give back!  It’s good for the community, and it will bring you business.  You can sponsor the local high-school baseball team or donate to a local charity.  Whomever you support will most likely let people know of your generosity, which will make people more likely to shop in your store.

13) Returns! Make it easy for customers to return merchandise.  This will make customers feel more comfortable about buying from you in the future.

14) Impulse items!  Near the cash register, make sure you have items people forgot they needed, or items they’ll want to buy when they see them.  One great impulse item is the reusable shopping bag.  It saves you money, too.

15) Signs!  Make sure your store is clearly visible from the street, and make improvements to existing signs or add signs in order to attract people passing by.  If people don’t know where you are, they won’t buy anything.

16) Essentials!  If you have essential items people need, like toilet paper, people will be more likely to come to your store when they run out, and they’ll also probably buy something else as well.

17) Snacks!  Make a little extra money and make hungry shoppers happy by selling snack food items.

18) Window display!  If you have a big window in the front of your store, put something good in it.  You may want to put a variety of merchandise in the window, or hire a painter to decorate the window to draw attention to your store and let people know what you’re selling.  You may even want to change the window display on a regular basis to keep it fresh and interesting.

19) Dress for success!  Consider what you wear to work as well as what your employees wear.  You don’t need to start wearing uniforms, but you should make sure you and your employees look good, and that you aren’t wearing anything frightening or offensive.

20) Clear the air!  Does your store stink?  You may want to have one of your friends with a good sense of smell come in and give you an honest opinion.  Sometimes you don’t notice a smell because you’re around it all the time.  Take the appropriate steps to make your store smell nice.

21) Potty room!  Allow customers to use the bathroom.  People really appreciate being allowed to use the bathroom in a store, especially if they have little kids, and they’ll feel better about your store knowing you have a bathroom they can use.

22) Make change!  Don’t deny customers simple requests like making change if they need some quarters to do their laundry.  Enforcing no-change rules like this will make them never want to shop there again, and giving people change will make them feel good about your business.

23) Go to the show!  Attend trade shows to see what’s new in the industry.  It’s not just an excuse to go to Las Vegas.  Going to a wholesale merchandise show is the best way to see what’s new.  You can order items at the show, and you’ll find yourself buying items you never knew existed before the show.  Your store will have a more diverse product line, and your customers will appreciate it.

24) Be available!  Look at your store hours and ask yourself if you’re missing any sales.  If you’re closed, people can’t buy from you.  The opposite is also true.  If your store is open late and has no customers, you may save money by closing earlier rather than paying staff to be open late.  When analyzing this, make sure you consider the day of the week as well as the season of the year.  It may make sense to have different business hours in different seasons.

25) Buy from Kole Imports!  You know I wouldn’t write something without promoting Kole Imports.  At least I waited until the end.  Seriously, we have a great product line, and now that we are concentrating on closeouts, we’ve always got something new and different for you.  See it all at www.koleimports.com

In celebrating our 25th Anniversary this year, I’ve been going through old photos of the people and offices of Kole Imports.  Looking closer at some of the pictures, it’s dramatic how much things have changed.  I won’t go into how much older the people look now, but I will say that the item packaging in the old pictures definitely shows its age. 

We’ve spent a lot of time keeping the packaging of our products current, which makes them more attractive, which makes them sell better.  Our in-house team of graphic artists works every day to make improvements to old packaging and designs the packaging for new items.  The first thing a customer does when they get an item home is remove and throw away the packaging, but the packaging played a vital role in getting them to buy the item in the first place.  If the packaging looks good and says what the item is and what it does, people are more likely to buy it.  Also, they will perceive the item as having more value and being better quality, even if it’s exactly the same as another item in ugly packaging.  See the picture of the door handles below, and ask yourself which one you would buy if you saw them side-by-side in a store.  Same exact item.  Only the packaging is different. 

1980s package design was simple. Yellow with black writing.

New item packaging is much more colorful and attractive.

Old packaging is on the left. Updated packaging on the right.

Happy New Year!

We’re especially excited this year because 2010 is our 25th year in business.  Looking back on the last 25 years, we’re having fun remembering how we got here.  This is the Kole Imports story.

In 1985, after a few successful years of selling merchandise in local swap meets, Rob and Danny Kole founded Kole Imports along with their father Art and mother Pearl.  They realized that there was money to be made by directly importing merchandise and wholesaling it to local wholesalers and retailers.  The Koles quickly found success importing and wholesaling auto accessories.  This was a great time to be an importer, as the dollar store phenomenon was heating up in the United States, and the Koles increased their product line to include thousands of dollar store items.  The Koles postioned themselves as dollar store specialists, and in the next few years became a leader in the wholesale dollar store merchandise industry.  As time passed and sales increased, the product line was expanded and improved, and Kole Imports moved to a bigger warehouse, office and showroom and hired more people to help grow the business. 

Committed to value and variety, and mindful of their customers’ need to make a good profit, Kole Imports created the Profit Source Philosophy, which permeates every aspect of the business.  The Profit Source Philosophy is quite simple:  Kole Imports is committed to being their customer’s best source of profit.  This means seeing things from the customer’s perspective.  “Is this item an outstanding value when sold in my store?”   “Will I make a good profit on it?”  “Will it sell quickly?”  “Is it attractively packaged?”  “Is it retail-ready, easy to display, and UPC tagged?”  Thinking like the customer and ensuring that they make a good profit has ensured Kole Imports’ success and has brought them to their 25th anniversary stronger than ever.

Rob and Danny Kole are always looking for new win-win opportunities, and they’ve come up with some great new ideas over the years. Their biggest project, promopallets.com, was very ambitious, but it was worth it.  The Koles realized that many retailers would love to have more merchandise to sell in their stores if it was easy to set up in their POS system, easy to set up in their store, and came with its own display box.  Kole Imports created entire pallets and half pallets of merchandise in displays which can be placed on the sales floor, unwrapped, scanned into the POS system (just 1 UPC code for the whole pallet), and are ready for customers to buy in under 10 minutes.  Kole Imports also offers smaller free-standing displays and counter-top displays on the promopallets.com site as well.

Over the last 2 years, the Koles have focused on expanding their line of closeouts, and their customers are loving it.  Kole Imports is constantly searching for great closeout deals on high-quality items to offer to their customers at super-low prices.

Kole Imports has come a long way since 1985, and here are the pictures to prove it. 

Kole Imports Booth in Las Vegas in the 1980s. Rob Kole (mustache), Danny Kole (yellow shirt) and Art Kole (white shirt & blue pants on the right).

Our booth at the current Las Vegas Wholesale Merchandise Show.

Is that Mister Kotter or Richard Simmons? Nope. It's Rob Kole in the original Kole Imports Office.

The Original Kole Imports Office and Warehouse.

The Current Kole Imports Office.

The Current Kole Imports Warehouse.