Kole Imports Blog

onday morning: it marks the beginning of a brand new week for all of us. It’s the opening day for new challenges, new solutions, and new opportunities to make positive changes to your business. I’m not trying to sugarcoat the inevitable dread that comes along with the end of the weekend. I am just as prone to a debilitating “case of the Mondays” as the next person. But I am trying to point out that Monday mornings are a chance for us to re-examine the issues we faced during the previous week with a clear head and refreshed point of view.

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With this in mind, I try to use my Monday mornings for brainstorming.  Marketing relies heavily on creative thought, and my Monday morning brain is usually just empty enough to allow new ideas to flow right in.  I typically start by checking all the major news sources for business and media developments.  In order to stay ahead of the competition you’d better at least stay on top of current events, right?  Whether you are a dollar store owner, a wholesale distributor or a closeout buyer, in this age of instant communication there is a salient news source for any industry, including yours.

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And so, in the spirit of Monday morning, I’d like to share a brainstorming tip with you:  Sometimes the most unexpected places lead to the most useful wisdom.   In my case, that unexpected place was the Fashion & Style section of the New York Times.  Now, before you accuse me of confusing “brainstorming” with “reading for my own pleasure,” give me a chance to explain.  The article I found was called, “Three Merchants Beat the Recession by Selling to Kids,” by Michael Winerip, and the stories it told are applicable to all of us: suppliers and distributors alike.  Here’s what I learned:

“Adults who stop spending on themselves in bad times will still spend on children.”

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Parents want the best for their children, even if it means scrimping on items for themselves.  Most parents would rather see their kids have decent school supplies and clean clothes than spend money on personal items.  Spending on children can even be a pleasurable experience for adults.  It feels good to be able to make your child smile or keep your baby warm, even when you have been hit by bad economic times.  This is especially important for dollar store owners to note.  Dollar stores are in a unique position to provide school supplies, toys, educational games, and other children’s items at the best value possible.  And by increasing stock of children’s merchandise, dollar store owners can simultaneously raise sales and profits.

Spending on a child’s talents or interests is viewed by many consumers as an investment. 

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The article cites the example of a business owner who says he ‘can’t afford not to work,’ but makes sure to send his college-aged children on trips to Puerto Rico and Europe.  On a smaller scale, the same concept can likely be seen in your very own dollar store.  You have probably seen customers who will pass on items for themselves, but still purchase items used to benefit their child.  In general, parents place nurturing a child’s education over other spending because they see it as an investment that will bring future returns, not a waste of money. 

How does this apply to your dollar store or wholesale business? Simply put: children’s merchandise is the New Necessity. And in the dollar store and wholesale businesses, we thrive on stocking necessities for less! Every dollar store and wholesaler alike should keep this fact in mind when ordering new merchandise. Re-evaluate your current stock to see how much of it is geared toward children. Are you lacking in crafts or educational hobbies? Do you supply enough toddler apparel and school supplies? Try adding more children’s items like those pictured here. Not only can these items increase your sales, they can also revitalize the future of your business.

 As a marketer for Kole Imports, I often face  the challenge of making buyers see beyond merchandise category labels. I love this part of my job because it gives me a chance to help wholesalers and closeout dealers see the versatility in our merchandise. For example, yesterday I was on the phone with a wholesale floral supplier who had a problem: “I just don’t see that much I can use,” he said, “I’m not a dollar store.”

“You may not be a dollar store but your goal is to make a profit, right?” I asked him, “You want to get great savings and pass them along to your customers, don’t you?” Obviously, he responded affirmatively. Because that’s what we all want, suppliers and retailers alike. Our industries may be different and our “labels” diverse, but the goal of our businesses is the same. We are all in the business of making a profit.

And as profit-makers, sometimes we need to get creative. When you’re looking for the best deals and trying to stay a step ahead of your competition, you need a discerning eye and an open mind. That floral supply wholesaler was missing a valuable opportunity to take advantage of hundreds of products in our stock. He didn’t see the hidden gems hiding in merchandise categories that don’t immediately scream, “Floral Supplies!” Therefore he was missing out on a way to get great items at great prices, while also adding merchandise to his inventory that his competitors either don’t have or sell at much higher price points.

I’m going to give you the same tips I gave him. Here’s the list of items I gave him, along with their “alternate uses.” I think you might be surprised by some of the ways our merchandise can be used:

CC184: 7” Round Mirror
Floral Uses: Table embellishment. Place mirror underneath bud vase display for a quick dose of elegance.

 GV151: Small River Stones
 Floral Uses: Vase filler for bamboo and other floral arrangements to add natural appeal.   

 RB170: Peach Novelty Trim
 Floral Uses: Arrangements and displays. Adding a touch of bright ribbon or tulle can bring even a single flower to life!

GC705: Glass Round Bowl
Floral Uses: Great for parties or weddings. Fill with water and use to float flowers and even tea light candles!

 So for your next purchase, why not try to capture that creative edge over your competitors? Look into merchandise categories on our website that you have never browsed before. You may be surprised by what you find. Mr. Floral Supplies certainly was. He ended up making a purchase that very same day, and from what I hear, he will be reordering soon.

How many of you have heard that line one too many times? I know I have. It was the first thing I learned as a 16 year-old hawking T-shirts over the summer. But have you ever stopped to consider what that phrase actually means? Why does it matter what the floor of your store looks like, if customers are going to dig through your displays anyway? What is the point of re-merchandising windows and straightening shelves at the end of every day? Does what your store looks like truly affect how much you sell?

The answer is a resounding: YES! You may not realize it, but the layout of your store has a profound psychological impact on your customer.  Cleanliness, order and well-stocked shelves can do more for your sales than advertising or merchandise selection combined.  Think about it.  Imagine your reactions to the various stores you frequent in your neighborhood.  When you’re out shopping, do you stop by the sale rack that looks like it’s been picked over and plowed through all day?  Do you reach into the dump display that’s almost empty?  Of course not!  You want to imagine that you’re getting the first pick of sale merchandise, even if you’re the last customer of the day.  You can’t help it.  We were born consumers before we became vendors, and we’re wired to react positively to appealing design.

Don’t believe me?  Try this simple little test:  Compare the two displays below.  Both contain the same merchandise.  Both have the same number of pieces.  Both have been on our showroom floor for the same amount of time.  But I’m willing to bet you a dollar store that you prefer one image over the other. 

                        

                                                           
Why? Because one looks better than the other! Now you know what your customers are thinking when they see a well-tended display versus one that has been neglected for days. People are drawn to things that look appealing, no matter what setting they’re in. The same rule I learned at that T-shirt store in high school still applies to the massive amounts of merchandise I work with today. So here’s your assignment from Kole Imports: next time you find yourself alone in your dollar store, take a look around. Are the shelves straight? Is the floor dusted? Did you change the placement of at least one item that day? Make some simple changes in your daily routine and before you know it, you will see an increase in daily traffic and sales. That’s the beauty of merchandising.

Kole Imports’ success is due largely to our huge selection of dollar store merchandise, and we continue to offer great deals on dollar store items.  We just want to mention that we also carry  items which retail for more than a dollar.   If you’re looking for wholesale general merchandise to sell at different price points, come to koleimports.com and see what we have.

We’ve spent a lot more time and energy seeking out and buying closeouts lately, which means we’ve expanded our range of products significantly, with lots of great new dollar store items and also many new over $1 retail items.  Browsing through our items, you will even find items we’re wholesaling for well under a dollar, which you’ll be able to sell for more than a dollar in a retail store.  If we got a great deal on an item as a closeout, you’ll get a great deal on it when you buy it wholesale from us.  Here are a few pictures of our over $1 items.

Laser Level As Seen On TV # OA584

Portable 250 PSI Air Compressor # OA322

Cable knit purse with snowball ties # OA944

3-Pc Tealight Candle Holder # OA759

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

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.

We just received a wholesale closeout lot of CD greeting cards.  What’s a CD greeting card?  It’s a nice 5 1/2 x 8 1/8 inch greeting card with a little pocket in it, containing a 35-40 minute CD of music.  The music varies depending on the theme of the card.  We have birthday cards, Mother’s Day cards, newborn baby cards, and romantic cards, all of which are available as separate items in English or Spanish.  We’re wholesaling them for 55 cents per card, which is a great value, and makes the item perfect for sale in a dollar store, though they would sell quickly at $1.99 as well.  See all of our closeouts at www.koleimports.com

Retailing is a very challenging business, even more so when your top price is $1.  And yet, despite these and other obstacles, many dollar store retailers thrive and grow, in good times and bad, by maintaining great customer loyalty.

As a general merchandise and closeout wholesaler, it’s important that we understand what is happening in the retail world.  We talked to several retailers, both small and large format, to get their views on this subject.  What emerges is not so much a secret formula, but instead a checklist of simple common sense rules that keep customers coming back and telling their friends.

To start with the basics, experienced store managers know that when a customer samples a store, they’ll be back.  The bargains they discover are simply too appealing to resist.  The hard part is getting them to come in and try the store in the first place.

Many first-time customers have the idea that dollar stores offer inferior merchandise or that the selection is limited.  Of  course, nothing could be farther from the truth, but lets talk about getting the customer to sample your store.

First, dollar stores are the domain of female shoppers, generally blue-collar workers with household incomes of less than $30,000.  For these shoppers, perception is vital.  They are attracted to stores that look clean and inviting, but NOT those that look like they have spent a lot of money on furnishings.  Shoppers feel they won’t be saving money if the store can afford to splurge on fancy fixtures and decorations.  So, keep it friendly, clean and simple.  No-frills merchandising is the best strategy for attracting customers in this demographic.

Friendly also means working hard to impress the customer with your customer service.  Make it a point to greet every customer at the door, like Wal-Mart does, and train your people to make eye contact and smile.  Nothing impresses a new customer more than a friendly store, and good management can control how the customer perceives your customer service staff.  Store employees should be motivated to be friendly to shoppers.  Of course, there is a difference between being friendly and being annoying.  Greet people, and then leave them alone to shop in peace.  That way they’ll know you are there if they have any questions, but that you won’t be following them around the store asking them if they need help every 5 minutes.

Another thing that keeps customers coming back is inventory turnover.  The most successful chains know that customers enjoy shopping for impulse items, the element of finding unexpected bargains, so make sure those items are turned frequently.  Shopper frequency at dollar stores averages 11 times per year, so that indicates a monthly turn of impulse items is about right.  Consider buying some wholesale closeout impulse items for your store.  Once they’re sold out, switch to a different closeout item so you always have something new and unique for your customers.  Eventually, they’ll come to your store specifically to see what new closeout items you have by the cash register, and this will equal more sales for you and a more loyal customer.

So far, we’ve been talking about convenience.  the other half of the customer loyalty equation is price, and the only way to consistently assure your customers of the best prices is to buy from reputable suppliers who have a history of delivering merchandise on time with no surprises. 

Remember that your wholesale merchandise and closeout supplier is also your partner: suppliers hear about new product breakthroughs before anyone else does, and it’s their business to know the market.  By doing your homework and working with the best suppliers, you can guarantee your customers the best value for their money. And that will keep them coming back for years to come.

Of course, at this point we’d like to recommend you buy from Kole Imports, as we have 25 years of experience in the wholesale dollar store merchandise business, and we are also closeout experts.  Click to see our wholesale and closeout merchandise.

Looking for inpriation?  You’ve found it here for less than a dollar.  We just received a closeout lot of Framed Inspirational Message Pictures, and we’re selling them for 65 cents each, 12 in a case.  They are 10″ wide by 12″ high, and there are 3 different styles as follows:

• Success Is Knowing When To Stop And Play
• Today I Will Stop And Smell The Flowers
• The Best Things In Life Are Always Free

Inspriational 10" x 12" Frames

Survival in today’s tough retail climate is all about innovation and creating customer satisfaction. One of the principal tools available to the dollar store retailer is the store display merchandising. How and where displays are set up, how well the sales team understands their design and the quality of the display’s “look” will determine how effective they are. Presentation is just as important in the dollar store business as it is in other retail categories.

In-store merchandising  is no longer a commodities-driven method of organizing a product at retail, but rather the last stage of a comprehensive and integrated marketing plan. When the shopper enters the store for the first time, she is subconsciously making a mental evaluation of several factors, and the focal point is the display. A well-thought-out display generates more customer traffic, creates repeat business and increases the average purchase size – all leading to increased sales.

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