Notes from Nikki: Add Black Friday to your bank account

As retailers we all experience the pressure around Thanksgiving from mass merchants, internet retailers and local small businesses capitalizing on Black Friday. We cannot, however, use this same mentality of course. Our money comes in the spring and if we're doing things right our "Black Friday" comes sometime in late May. This doesn't mean that we should ignore this fantastic time of year, however. There are many ways that we as garden centers can capitalize on this lucrative time of year and have a "Black Friday Part Two."

• Instead of trying to give "Doorbuster" deals, offer more specialized discounts on different categories of merchandise. Instead of selling just one type of pot at a ridiculously low rate, offer all of your pottery at a more reasonable percentage off. This will target more than just the consumer that likes that one type of pot and will give you the opportunity to tack on extra sales such as plants to go into the pots and potting soil.
• Use your internet presence to properly advertise what you're going to have to offer as a "Black Friday" sale. Using sites such as Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter you can tease your customers with photos of items that they might have been waiting on to go on sale all year. This will instill a sense of excitement in your customers and will make them more likely to come visit your store instead of waiting outside of a box store at a ridiculous hour of the morning for a bargain priced item.
• Use your monthly newsletter to promote certain items that haven't sold well throughout the year as "gift ideas." Instead of using your November newsletter / mass email as another information filled correspondence, make it more specific for different sorts of shoppers. Create gift ideas for certain types of people such as "Dads, Grads and Manly Men." By providing your customers with advice on shopping you'll gain their trust and also make their task of gift shopping easier.

Try to implement some or all of these hints into your seasonal sales schematic. Take notice, none of these hints are directly associated with Christmas decor. You want your Christmas decor to be an afterthought once your customers are already in your store. By bombarding them with Christmas themed incentives, give them an alternative to the retail market that has suddenly become inundated with red and green advertisements.

Nikki Weed is a horticulturist and professional adventurer who uses her experiences and knowledge to manage a successful garden center in Greenville, S.C. She can be reached at pepitaweed@gmail.com.