NEW NRHA Monthly Program Communication – December 2013

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The bustle of the holiday buying season means more customers will likely be coming through your doors. To ensure the safety and security of your store during the busy holiday season, having the proper crowd control procedures in place is vital.

Your crowd control strategy should include these three steps:
• Remind and retrain all employees about your store’s emergency plan to address potential risks facing workers and customers.
• Dedicate a knowledgeable employee to communicate and manage crowds from arrival to departure.
• Establish clear protocols for conflict resolution. Giving employees the authority and tools to calm frustrated shoppers is important, especially if the need to diffuse a situation presents itself.

This Holiday Selling Season, Try a Gift Niche
Many consumers are out scouting stores in search of the perfect unique gift for everyone on their list. Consider adding a novel product niche to your store.

Determining the right gift niche for your market takes a bit of research. Work with your distributor or co-op to scope out the local competition and ask your customers what they’d like to see in your store. You might even poll your employees to find out what products customers have been telling them they’d like to see you sell as well. Start by selling a few of those items to see what demand is like, then keep rotating displays and add different inventory often to keep gift shoppers coming back.

WRLA IN PARTNERSHIP WITH NRHA
The goal of the North American Retail Hardware Association is to help independent hardware and home improvement retailers become better and more profitable merchants through a wide array of educational and training programs, financial management resources, and human resource tools that are all available online. WRLA members get unlimited access to a full range of training and management services when they join NRHA through the WRLA. 

Visit www.wrla.org or CLICK HERE for more information about NRHA.