By Tara Kaifesh, category analyst, for the Resolutions for Independent Pharmacies blog series
Are you a medium or large format store looking for ways to increase sales? One way is to identify your top-selling items and pinpoint cross-merchandising and selling opportunities for them.
Start by determining which items are top sellers. There are a few ways to do this. The easiest is if you have your POS reports set up so you can identify the products that are top movers. If you don’t have these reports available, the next best thing you can reference is our list of Never Outs®. This tool is part of our TEMPS® Category Manager program. Never Outs are the top-selling items in each subcategory and should always be on a retailer’s shelves to maximize sales.
Once you’ve identified the products driving sales, determine what other departments you could incorporate them into. If you need ideas, think about conditions being addressed by products in a department and when you would recommend the top-selling items as a complement to cover all the symptoms that may be experienced. For instance, hand sanitizer is a top-selling item in the Skin Care category, and it would also be a good fit in the cold & allergy department to help protect against the spread of germs.
A new resource from HRG that you can also look to for ideas is a series of infographics we kicked off this year, Increasing the Market Basket. In the series, we provide ideas for subcategories and/or products that you can incorporate into other categories. Taking the time to find ways to add complementary items into your departments will provide a more convenient shopping experience for your customers, as well as encourage impulse buys and boost sales.