How to have a sale without having a sale
Blog
Is there a particular brand you can think of where you wait for the sales before buying? It’s natural not to want to pay full price for an item if you know a sale is around the corner however, this can be a problem when you are selling handmade jewellery. You don’t want people to be waiting for the next discount in order to buy from you. So how do you stop this from happening? Here are a few suggestions.
The first thing to consider is why sellers have sales in the first place.
Shops have sales for a number of reasons. Primarily it is to clear old season stock to make way for new stock. It can also be to boost engagement with their brand and to get the first sale from a customer who is wavering. However, if you’ve got your pricing right then hopefully you can attract customers at the right price for you both.
This is a complicated issue and does depend on your sales model. If you hand make your work to order the best answer is to never have a sale.
So, how can you get the promotional benefit of having a sale without having a sale? Here are a few suggestions
Offer a discount when buying a set
You could consider offering a discount if someone buys more items e.g. if they buy the necklace they can purchase the matching earrings for a discounted price. This is known as up-selling and helps to increase the profit you make per transaction.
Offer free postage and packaging
Although this provides some financial discount to the customer the crucial thing is that the discount isn’t on the jewellery so the value of your brand remains intact. Postage and packaging costs can be off-putting for customers so being able to offer this for free or a discounted price is a good incentive.
Offer free premium gift wrapping and/or jewellery box
This is an additional service that costs extra but does not affect the perceived price of your jewellery.
Lucky dip or free gift
Offer an additional item of your choosing when a person spends over a certain amount. You can then include an item from a previous range. People love a surprise so this can work well depending on the cost of your items initially.
But what if you need to have a sale to clear some stock?
Of course, there may be a time when you need to clear some stock to get some money back into the business. This could be because you have extra jewellery that was made for a craft fair or shop that you wholesale at. Or is from the end of a range you are no longer making. You have a couple of options to do this without affecting your brand
Consider selling at a craft fair or sample sale
You could take this over-stock to a craft fair and sell at a discount. This could work well to clear stock quickly and doesn’t affect your pricing online.
Sell at a discounted rate on another site
I have done this myself. I moved from selling beaded jewellery to silver jewellery and I didn’t want to heavily discount the beaded jewellery in my Etsy shop. This is because I wanted to get started selling the silver range on Etsy so I decided to sell the beaded pieces on ebay. This was to make back the cost of the beads more than it was about making a profit (although I still made a small percentage). I also did a couple of craft markets and was able to sell some of the stock that way too.
Can you suggest any innovative ways to have a sale without having a sale? We’d love to hear about them in the comments below.
Best of luck with your jewellery sales (that aren't sales) and of course, depending on your business you may mix these ideas up with some straight up sales if that works for you and your business model.
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