Kole Imports Blog

What do customers want when they are shopping at a dollar store?  And what would they buy in a dollar store, even though they didn’t know they wanted it when they walked in the door?

These are relatively simple questions, the answers to which are fairly complex, and vary depending on the location of the store.  How do you answer them?

Obviously, if you’ve been running a dollar store for a while, you know what your best-selling items are, as well as your best-selling types of items.  This is the first place to think about adding items to your inventory.  If  wrenches are selling really well, do you carry nuts and bolts?  If not, you should put some on the shelf and see how they do.   This is called adding a complementary item, and it’s a basic retail strategy which works great.

 If a 16-ounce travel coffee mug is a great seller, you should add some other styles of travel mug to your inventory.  The dollar store customer will have more choices, and if you sell out of one item, people will likely buy the style you have left, which means you didn’t miss out on the sale.  Offering a few different types of a popular item is a great way to generate consistent sales, and to compensate for sold-out items. 

Look around your dollar store for impulse items.  Do you have enough items people will want when they see them?  Are these items placed in obvious locations near the front of the store, or near related items on your shelves.  If someone doesn’t know they’re going to buy something, they need to easily find it.  It’s a simple concept.  Look around your store and see if it’s true in your situation.  A few examples of great dollar store impulse items are toys, lip balm, sunglasses, candy, iPod cases, and small tools.  I’m sure you can think of many more.  When you’re placing an order with a dollar store merchandise wholesaler, think about this when considering what new items to buy.  Do it right, and you’ll increase the average order size, and you’ll make your customers even happier. 

Get into the habit of asking yourself simple questions about how you can improve your store, and over time your sales will improve, and your customers will be happier.  You can also ask your customers what sort of things they’d like to see in your store, and pay attention when they tell you what they’d like to buy that you don’t carry.

Kole Imports officially turns 25 at the end of this week, and we’re planning a party to celebrate and show appreciation to all of our employees who helped us reach this milestone.  It occurred to me that it would be fun to look back at some of our oldest active items, which are the engine of our continued success, appealing to customers for decades and always selling well.  We’re committed to value and variety, and we have had huge success with one-time closeout deals over the last few years, but it’s also important for us to remember that our customers also need fast-selling staple items in their stores.  Here are just a few of the items we’ve carried since the beginning, which continue to sell well and make our customers happy.

Super Glue is a great deal and always sells well. Item HZ025

Stop! Hammer Time! Always a great seller. Everyone needs a hammer. Item AB030

Kids Recorder Flute. This actually sounds pretty good, for a recorder. Item WX030

As long as people ride bikes, they'll need this item. Always a great seller. Item MO065

Pin The Tail On The Donkey Game. This one's a classic. Kids still play this game at birthday parties. Item PA040

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’re well into the Christmas shopping season, but Christmas is still a few weeks away.  You’re busy running your store, probably open extra hours, and working as hard as you can to make it a successful holiday season.  In all the excitement of the present, don’t forget to plan for the future.

You’ll need to replace all of the items you’ve sold this season, and it’s best to get some new merchandise ordered early so it will arrive before the last of the old items has sold.  You still have time, but you should be making a mental list of what you need, or better yet, a written list of items to buy.  This way, when it’s time to order, the process will be quick and easy. 

This is also a great opportunity to add some new variety to your store.  Now that the Christmas items are gone, you can fill that space with closeouts, winter items, or just about anything you think would sell well to people in your area.  Take a look out your door and think about what items your friends and neighbors need and want.  If you do this every day, you’ll come up with some good new ideas, which will result in happy customers and more sales for you.  You could even ask some of your customers what type of items they’d like to see in your store.  There’s a good chance they’ll mention items other customers would also buy if you carried them.

If you look at the next few weeks as an opportunity to expand your offerings and improve your store, good things will happen.  Don’t wait until the last minute and throw together a quick wholesale order.  Take the time to buy the best possible items, and reap the rewards.

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.

read more »

The success of your store depends on a number of factors, including location, presentation and merchandise quality. Before you open a dollar store, ask yourself the following questions:

Are there other successful non-competing businesses nearby?

* It would be nice if your one dollar store was a destination, but it’s important to attract impulse buyers as well. It’s easiest to do this if there are many people already shopping at other types of stores in the area. Look for successful restaurants, laundromats, coffee shops, movie theaters, and higher price retail stores near your location.  One of the most successful dollar stores we know of is right next to a busy movie theater, where people come out after the movie and ask each other “what do we do now?”  If the store has a low price point and interesting displays in the window, people are likely to say, “Let’s go to the dollar store.”  In this situation, the dollar store would do well to stock a lot of snack foods, which people would buy and bring into the theater with them.

Is there ample parking nearby?

Is there a lot of foot traffic in front of your store?

read more »

Everything must go!  We don’t care about making money!  We just love giving you the best deal on the things you need!

OK, we do care about making money, but we also need to make room in our warehouse for the huge shipment of closeout wholesale merchandise we have coming in the next month.
read more »