Make the most of your holiday merchandising space this season to delight shoppers, create a lush and generous ambiance and optimize sales.

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Identify your top 50 or 100 core products that you will not run out of and ensure you stick to a plan to ensure the store is faced and stocked – especially on key items. Running out of core baking ingredients or whipping cream means your shoppers will be disappointed – and go elsewhere.

Pull out all the promotional stops. Utilize in-store and external marketing to communicate your special holiday offerings, such as pies, turkey, catering and all the great deals.

End caps and displays near your check outs should have impulse items with good margins at eye level. Examples may be chocolate, wine, nuts, and holiday themed items.

Use multi-pricing with case stacks or large displays of featured items to move more volume, (i.e. “2-fers”, “3-fers”.) Choose products for large displays that may have good after-holiday sales potential so that you don’t get stuck with 100 cases of candy canes.

Pile it high, watch it fly. Feature categories that have a strong tie-in to holiday entertaining with bountiful displays and eye-catching signage. The holidays are the perfect time to showcase: baking staples, premium cheese, beer and wine.

Offer small packaged gift baskets or bundles. Chocolate bars, coffee, tea, cookies all make great hostess or teacher gifts. Giving a box of tea with a chocolate bar or a set of 3 chocolate bars wrapped in ribbon is a nice gift and creates easy and impulsive gift solutions for your shoppers.

Sample, sample, sample. Cheese, snacks and house made-prepared foods items are great categories to focus on because they can boost basket size.

Offer specific promotions in your prepared foods department. For example, “Order 3 sides and get a free one”, or “Order a ham or turkey and get a free side.”

Sell gift cards folks want to give. Promote a well marketed gift card program complete with nice envelopes.

Arm your staff with info. Provide employees with new item FAQs and refreshers on great customer service, including empowering them to Make It Right on the spot.

And last but not least, the holidays bring many first-time shoppers to your store. Their experience in your store, with the products you offer and the stellar customer service they receive, will be the reason that some of them come back in January. Make sure your staff and your store are ready to deliver an awesome shopping experience!

Contact a Columinate Operations Consultant for merchandising, operations and marketing support.