Fitness Merchandising Pricing

Let’s Sell!
You’ve done a lot of reading and research on merchandise to stock in your box. The last, crucial step is to price and market your merchandise so members will know it is available and want to buy it!

In this newsletter we will discuss displays, tagging, pricing and marketing so you can spend more time focusing on coaching!

Displays
No one is going to buy a new shirt or some protein mix if isn’t in plain view, but they also won’t buy it if it is just sitting in a box on the floor. Creating a well signed and well organized display will take some time and energy investment up front, but it will drastically improve your sales.

Taking even just one weekend to really revamp your sales area can reap profits.

Space is likely a huge factor in planning your gym, so steer clear of displays that will eat up a ton of square footage, leaving mannequins and those gross circular sales racks for less awesome businesses.

When it comes to displays less is more. You don’t need to put everything you carry onto a wall mounted display rack or in a countertop enclosure. Pick a theme (like nutrition/equipment/apparel) and really design that for a month, and then rotate themes. You of course, will still have all your other products on hand, but by rotating what you emphasize, people will start buying more – instead of boring them into mentally blocking out your storefront area.

When it comes to setup there are three important factors:

  • First, you want your most popular, or most profitable (hopefully they are one and the same) items at eye level. Don’t clutter the floor, remember, less is more.
  • Use repetitive colors and shapes to draw the eye from the center of the display around the whole display.
  • Lastly, make sure the display is interesting from all sides!

The goal of your display is to allow your members to:

  • see the goods
  • see the quality and utility
  • see the price
  • self-select

and to do this in the shortest amount of time possible.

You can create yourself either a vertical display using wall brackets (Revgear specializes in this for Pro shops, but you might be able to get better prices – although more work on your part – at Home Depot) or creating a horizontal table space. Whatever you choose, make sure to rotate your product spotlight every month!

Tagging
I don’t know about you, but I hate to find something I love, and then not know how much it costs until I get rung up. Instead of purchasing the product I will often just put it down and look elsewhere. Don’t make this mistake! Make sure your display and tags clearly communicate to your clients how much they are being asked to shell out for each product.

There are a couple of ways to show the prices of your products. One way is to create aprice list sign, showing the price of each product, although if you carry more than a handful of products this gets too long. Another idea would be to have the price of each product secured to an area near that product display. Lastly you could actually tag each item. You can use this as a way to further your brand by creating custom tags.

No matter what type you choose, you want your prices to be bold, concise and both easy to see and easy to understand.

Pricing
We are in an age where your clients can Google the price of a lacrosse ball on the spot and find out if what you are asking seems fair. That is why you need to brand as much of your merchandise as possible, this adds value to the product for your customer. We are all fiercely loyal to our boxes, and love having the chance to parade the brand about – so use that to your advantage.

Pricing will be particularly tough on items easily available online, like protein mix. Your best bet here is to shop around and figure the price that an individual would incurincluding shipping. See what kind of bulk discounts you can get, along with any shipping offers, that will allow you to sell it at a similar price to what is online while still making a profit.

For branded products you can add in a nice markup. For example, our journals start at $13.49 for bulk orders, and many gyms re-sell them for $20.00, that is a pretty hefty profit, that just gets bigger for larger orders.

The same thing goes for t-shirts, you should be expecting to pay a ballpark of $10 per shirt (depending on who you print with and if you do all your own design work). You can resell t-shirts easily at $25.00, but some gyms are able to sell them at $35.00 or higher. Just note, the higher price you ask for, the more quality will be expected. Don’t charge $35.00 for a Hanes cotton shirt, clients will want the trendier and more comfortable American Apparel shirts at that price point.

Marketing
Once you have your products in hand, your display setup and everything priced its time to sell. Your product is not going to sell itself – so don’t expect to have a new shipment of shirts sell out in the first week.

Start pumping social media, get shots of members wearing the new apparel, and put it up on Facebook. “Check out [ATHLETE] killing today’s WOD in our brand new shirt! Just $XX.XX will give you superhero strength as well!”

Get shots of athletes mobilizing, and put if up on Facebook. “Have you mobilized today? We’ve got a new shipment of lacrosse balls and foam rollers, stop by to pick yours up today!”

You can repeat this for athletes partaking in post nutrition, using new jump ropes, rocking out pullups with grips, lifting with wrist bands etc. Take tons of photos and post them up as a sales pitch!

There isn’t just Facebook either, use all of social media, Twitter, Google+, You Tube etc. Maybe even make a poster, or create a mass email for all your members to hear about new products, and mail one out every month.

Marketing is all about shouting to the world what you have for them – so get up on a soap box and start talking about how great everything you carry is. Tout all the benefits they will get by using it!

This wraps up our series on Marketing & Profits! We hope you enjoyed it!

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