Creative Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Store
The owner of a store I visited years ago did $88,000 in remount business over 3 days. How did he do it? By giving away old gemstones. Here is his story. Like most bench jewelers, he bought a lot of color. He also had over eighty semi-mounts and rings from which he had taken out the centre stone and was left with just the mountings.
He needed a creative way to get rid of old stock and drive new business.
He got colorful bags from a party store, bought colored tissue paper and some gemstone boxes. Then, he put one gem into each box and labeled it with the gem name, weight and retail price. The gems included all types, ranging from amethysts to some nice emeralds, prices all the way from $25 to $700. He placed ONE box with the gem down in the colorful bag with the paper shooting out - you couldn’t see the stones just by peeking!
He put the mountings in his showcases, and the bags – over 70 of them in total – in front of them. It looked like poinsettias at Christmas!
He advertised by direct mail and traditional advertising: “FREE gemstones. No gimmicks. One per person.
The customer got to pick a bag, no purchase necessary. If they didn’t like their pick, they had ONE more chance.
He did this Thursday through Saturday. Just to get store traffic up. And like I said before, he did $88,000 in remount business over 3 days giving away old gemstones. Man, I’d either get my gems out of the back room or buy a bunch on Polygon before buying new ones!
