Selling More Housewares

Dear Retailers,

True Fabrications recently attended the International Housewares show in Chicago (in case you missed us there, you can also see the other wine related shows we are going to around the country).   We met some fantastic people within our industry and also picked up a great deal of knowledge about helping retailers increase their overall housewares sales.  Housewares sales, for the most part, are dominated by mass merchandisers or super centers.   Wine stores, grocery stores, liquor stores, etc. don't seem to do as well as they should with housewares considering they enjoy more frequent visits from their customers.  There seems to be two important reasons for this.

The first is that these types of wine/food/liquor stores are used to high velocity items and don't like the idea of dedicating space to slower velocity housewares items.   The second reason is that housewares are not appropriately or effectively cross merchandised with these high velocity food/wine/liquor items to maximize their sales.   These are easy obstacles to overcome especially within your wine and liquor departments.   As wine has grown in popularity, so too have wine accessories and wine homeware.   Appropriately merchandising these products throughout your stores and departments is the key to success in generating increased velocity of these high margin items.   We have discussed in the past simple cross merchandising by using for sale wine racks, gift boxes, and cheese boards within your wine displays.  .Or creating space within each wine aisle that features some functional and fun corkscrews or wine accessories to provide a visual break from the rows of wine labels.  There are several ideas and I'm sure as retailers, you have millions more.  We encourage you to try and test out new approaches.   And while you are at it, read this blog article in the Supermarket News about why generating housewares sales is a trend you'll want to keep up with.

Cheers!

True Fabrications