Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: How To Draw Consumers To Your Shop For The Challenge

Happy Monday!

Today is Rosh Hashanah which is the start of the Jewish New Year.  With that, I would like to wish my fellow Jewish friends a Happy & Healthy New Year.  I will not be in the office today.

I sure hope the word is spreading about my challenge that encourages consumers to visit as many brick and mortar quilt shops in the US & Canada before the end of November.  If you haven’t heard about it, here is the link to the contest.  Please share the link as much as possible so a huge level of participation can be attained for everyone’s benefit.  Please make sure to use the #scottsentme hashtag as well.  Also, if you spread the word, and your competitors spread the word, that will mean a lot of opportunities for everyone to maximize the benefits of this challenge.  In other words, together, we can move mountains….of fabric!

I feel strongly that this contest is a win win win all around.  For me, it shows what the Jaftex Companies and I are willing to do to help our customers and the industry as a whole thrive and not just survive (#sewrevolution).  It also demonstrates the power of social media and hopefully encourages the industry to rely on social media as a means of selling more fabric.  For the quilt shop owners, they win by getting lots of new customers to their shops that probably wouldn’t have visited had it not been for this challenge.  For the consumers, it forces them out of their homes and out of their comfort zones to lots of shops that they may have never seen before had it not been for the contest.  That will allow the consumers to see all the greatness that other shops have to offer.

Now that the word is spreading about the contest, I wanted to poke and prod quilt shop owners to help me, help them.  As I mentioned above, sharing the contest details is an obvious starting point.  Please share the details of the contest on all your social media pages and invite people to your shop to say to you in their loudest voice that, “Scott From Jaftex Sent Me!”  Also, I want to ask you to not just post about it once, but rather, keep posting about it on a weekly or daily basis as you can catch new participants with each additional post.  Also, try to mix up the way that you present the contest….don’t just keep posting the same thing over and over otherwise it might get ignored, overlooked or boring.

I want to encourage shop owners to be creative on how to get consumers to their shops and to encourage them to play along with the challenge.  Below, I will discuss some ideas that popped into my brain, but you are all way smarter and more creative than I am, so feel free to do your own thing and share your ideas in the comments for your fellow quilt shop owners to see.

• In a recent trip to Colchester Mills, the owner Cheryl had this great portable frame with that shop’s name that we both held up and took a picture of us holding.  See below.  This is a great way for consumers to meet the proof aspect of the contest that I require for every shop visited.  Perhaps the owners would even consider taking the photo with the consumers.  Just keep in mind that you need to make sure to have some proof of the date.  In this case, perhaps someone could hold up a calendar or newspaper in the photo with the date showing.

• What if the shop owners had some sort of token prize for the first 10 or 20 or 50 challenger visitors?  Something as simple as a rolled fat quarter.  Or how about a coupon for the next time they come in?  Wink, wink!  Work it so that you can get them back again.  Who doesn’t love recurring revenue?  Or you can even take it a step farther with something like this:  10% off on your next visit, 15% on your next visit after that and so on.
• Going with the coupon concept, what if you offered a coupon for people to buy from your online shop?  Incentivize them to buy more with tiered purchasing.  This way, you may have gotten them to buy in your store, but now you got them to buy off your website too.  See where I am going with this?  Now, perhaps you may find yourself a new loyal online customer too.
• How about honoring the Jaftex Companies for throwing this party by making a special Jaftex section and offering some specials on the most recent lines?
• Get them to sign up for your loyalty programs.
• Make sure to get their email addresses so you can grow your customer lists and have more potential with your newsletters and social posts.

The bottom line is this:  I am going to do my best to send you the customers, but you need to do your thing to keep them coming back for more.  Try as many or as few tactics as you wish, but don’t let the new opportunities pass you by.

Are you with me?  Well stop sitting around and get on it!  Chop chop!  No time to waste.

xxoo

Scott “Sent Me”