Kole Imports Blog

Wholesale Pet Merchandise

Do you have a pet section in your store?  If not, think about how many of your customers own dogs or cats.  Selling pet items is a great way to make more sales and increase repeat visits from your customers.

Kole Imports carries a nice assortment of wholesale pet merchandise, including leashes, bowls, chew toys, throwing toys, rope toys, rubber squeaky toys, cat teasers, litter boxes, collars, grooming gloves, nail clippers, rawhide chews, and more.  This makes it easy for you to put together a pet merchandise assortment to fit into a section of your store. 

How much space you dedicate to pet merchandise is up to you.  If you want to try a pet section out and see how it does, you can start small, with 20 or 30 items and see how they sell.  Our pet item packaging is bright yellow, so a wall of bright yellow packages will be noticed by your customers, and when they see the great values, especially compared to what they would pay at a pet store, they’ll be hooked. 

Just like toys are a great category for add-on sales to people with children, pet items will create extra sales from your pet-owning customers.  Click the following link to see our Wholesale Pet Items.  You will see for yourself that it’s possible to set up a really great pet item section without spending a lot of money.

Wholesale Gardening Items

The weather is getting warm, and it’s time to get ready for summer with wholesale gardening items. We have large quantities on hand of all of the classic items we’ve sold for years, as well as a lot of great new gardening closeouts. 

Gardening items are great sellers in warm weather. If you don’t have a garden section in your store, it’s a worthwhile addition. Your customers are getting ready for summer by getting their yards cleaned up and looking pretty.

Important items to carry are hand tools (shovel, claw, mini hoe), gloves, hose nozzles, large and small pots, kneeling pads, garden fence, clippers, plant hangers  and decorations.  Click here to see our wholesale gardening items. This is seasonal merchandise. Once we’re sold out, we won’t be ordering more until next season. Order now to get the best items before they’re gone.

Wholesale Closeout Merchandise

Closeout merchandise can be good or bad, depending on the desirability of the item and the wholesale price.  You don’t want to get a bad deal on a great item or a great deal on a bad item.  Neither situation is profitable to you, and profit is the bottom line.  Here are some wholesale closeout merchandise buying tips you can follow to boost your profits:

• Know your target market.  A closeout is only a great deal if you will be able to easily sell the items to your customers.  A little common sense and research go a long way here.  Consider the income level, climate, and popular trends in your area and focus on buying items that fit.  Boston Celtics merchandise would sell well in Massachusetts, but not so well in New York.  Hats and sunglasses will sell well if your store is on the beach.  Gloves do well in colder climates.  If you know what your customers want and need, it is possible to get a great deal on closeout items your customers want and need.

• Unique items sell well, if they’re unique in a good way.  People love gadgets and gimmicks and things they’ve never seen before.  Make sure you include some of these items in your product mix.  If your customer knows you have a history of selling unique and fun items, they’ll be more likely to buy from you again, as they’ll be curious about what new items you have to offer.

• Keep your closeouts relevant and interesting by including some seasonal items, related to the time of year, weather, upcoming holidays, and even local sports team seasons.  These factors will help the items to sell themselves.  Some examples are Christmas decorations, NFL car air fresheners, and warm gloves in the winter.  If it’s cheap, useful, and related to what’s going on in the customer’s life, they’ll buy it.  The tricky part for you, as a wholesale closeout buyer, is to find the best deal on seasonal items.  In many cases, seasonal merchandise can be bought much cheaper off-season than it can during the season.  For example, Christmas merchandise can be purchased at a much lower price in January than in November.  If you have room in your warehouse to store items for 10 months, you can boost your profits by buying seasonal items off-season.

• Brand-name closeouts are good sellers.  Companies spend billions of dollars advertising their products, but more than any individual product, they advertise to build brand recognition.  When the consumer sees an item with a brand they recognize, they are more likely to want to buy it because they trust the company, and they believe the company makes good products.  If you offer the customer a brand they trust at a lower price than they expect to pay, you will have success.

• Finding the right closeout supplier is vital to your success.  Kole Imports receives hundreds of closeouts every week, and we always have something new and different at a great price.  Many of Kole’s closeouts are priced low enough to be retailed in a dollar store, though many would sell well at $1.99 or more.  With closeout items in 44 different categories, Kole Imports is sure to have the right items to boost your profits.  Click here to see Kole Imports’ Wholesale Closeout Merchandise.

Michigan Wholesale Mart Show

Come visit us in Michigan at the Michigan Wholesale Mart Show and see our newest wholesale closeouts and specials.

It’s time to make your New Year’s Resolutions.  What are you going to do differently this year?  It’s time to make some changes which will improve your personal and business life.  In order to be effective, these resolutions need to be Specific, Measurable and Stated In The Positive.  What does that mean?

Specific:  State exactly what you intend to do. 

Measurable:  Build measurability into the resolution, giving specific numbers of pounds you want to lose or money you want to make. 

Stated In The Positive:  The resolution should say what you will do, not what you are going to stop doing. 

Don’t say “I’ll try to get more exercise.”  Do say “I will exercise an hour a day 5 days each week.”  Don’t say “I’ll make more sales in my store.”  Do say, “I will increase sales in my store by 10% in 2011.”   Don’t say “I will stop eating junk food.”  Do say “Every day I will eat healthy nutritious foods which are good for my body.”

If you are clear in stating to yourself what you intend to do, your mind will go to work making your resolutions come true.  If you resolved to increase sales by 10% and you find your sales flat at the end of February, you’ll know that action is necessary to reach your 10% goal by the end of the year.  If you keep doing what you did last year, you’ll get the same results.  If you are committed to keeping the promise you made to yourself, you’ll find a way to increase your sales.  More impulse items?  More advertising?  Bigger signs in front of your store?  Seasonal items?  Regional sports team merchandise?  Big sales?  Funny gadget items?  If you’re focused on keeping your resolution every day, you will find yourself experimenting with new things every month until you find what sells, and you’ll hit your 10% target. 

The purpose of a New Year’s Resolution is to make your life better by prompting you to keep promises to yourself.  When you make resolutions this year, be serious about them, write them down, and put them somewhere you will see them every day.  Then spend the year having fun trying different approaches to keep your resolutions.  And don’t make weak resolutions.  Really challenge yourself, and you will find that you have a very happy new year in 2011.

Heart Decoration # HM345

It’s time to stock your store for Valentine’s Day.  It’ll be here before you know it.  Kole Imports can help, with a huge variety of wholesale closeout Valentines Day items at great prices.  We have many different Valentine’s Day decorations and gifts.  We won’t be reordering any of these when they sell out, so order now to get the best items.  These are very nice quality closeout items from some of the USA’s biggest stationery and party supply companies.

If you’ve never sold Valentine’s Day items in your store, think about selling them this year.  Most of our items are wholesale priced low enough to be retailed for a dollar, which means they are inexpensive impulse items, which will add to the size of your customer’s average order over the next month.  It’s an easy way to add a little more profit to the beginning of your year, and it is also another way for you to better serve your customers and give them items they’re looking for.  It’s a true win-win situation.

Click here to see our Valentine’s Day items.

Christmas shopping season has begun.  What can you do to boost your store’s sales this holiday season?  Of course, we’re going to recommend that you buy wholesale Christmas merchandise from us (We have more wholesale Christmas items this year than ever before), but there are other things you can do as well. 

Start out by looking at your store and imagining you are a shopper getting ready for Christmas.  What are you looking to buy?  If you’re like most people, you have a few very specific needs and a lot of vague ideas.  This makes you especially susceptible to impulse items.  You may go to a discount store looking for Christmas wrapping paper, and as you walk through the store you see Christmas stockings for the kids, clear tape to use when wrapping presents, small inexpensive toys to put in the stockings, an As Seen On TV item to give to your weird uncle who already has everything, a mini LED flashlight for your mom to keep in her car for emergencies, socks and underwear for the kids.

As you can see, getting ready for Christmas doesn’t just mean stocking christmas items.  Retail shoppers are also looking for gifts of all sizes and prices during the holiday season.  If you have a lot of great gift items way in the back of your store, and all of your Christmas decorations and wrapping paper in the front of the store, will your customer make it to the back of the store or not?  Consider creating displays of great gift items and placing them in the front of the store along with your Christmas items.  Christmas shoppers are often in a hurry, but they will grab an impulse item if it is easy to find and it fits their Christmas gift giving needs. 

Letting people know you have Christmas items is also very important.  You should have signs outside the store advertising Christmas items as well as displays inside the store.  If you want to go the extra mile by dressing your employees up as elves, we have 794 elf costumes to sell, item number AR004, which we bought as a closeout.  We’re wholesaling them for $2.75 and the minimum order is 24.  If you’re not into elves, we have hundreds of other low-priced wholesale Christmas items, which you can see on our webstie by clicking here.

Getting yourself and your employees into the Christmas spirit is very important.  Holiday shoppers can be stressed out and rude, and it is important for a retailer to maintain a friendly, calm demeanor with everyone visiting their store.  As a manager, it’s up to you to communicate this to your employees and keep them motivated enough to make your customers feel welcome.  Customer service is a difficult job to do well, but it makes a huge difference.

Take some time today to look at your store and objectively ask yourself if you’re ready for Christmas shoppers.  You’ll find areas for improvement, and you will be able to improve your store and boost your profits. 

Kole imports wishes you a happy and profitable holiday season.

Wholesale Christmas Snowman Light # AR447

Christmas is approaching fast, and it’s time to think about stocking your store with holiday merchandise.  You’ll get the best deals if you buy Closeout Christmas Items, but you need to order early before all of the best items are sold out.  We have over 400 Wholesale Christmas Closeouts in stock and ready to ship right now, but they are selling fast.  Click here to see them all.   Many of our Christmas Closeouts wholesale for well under a dollar and could be retailed in a dollar store.  We also have some very nice over $1 decoration items, including plug-in lights, ornament sets, yard decorations, craft kits, candle holders and interior decorations.