Increasing Apparel Sales in 2023

Charles Hartley, Business Development Consultant– North and Midlands, Foremost Golf offers advice to help sell more apparel

Beyond its practical purposes, clothing is a statement about a golfer’s identity. Therefore, golfers pay a lot of attention to what clothes they wear and where they buy them. Clothing is an important means of expression for someone’s personality, emotion, and belonging to the golf club. Here we explore five topic areas that will help you increase apparel sales in 2023.

Buying Plan
Looking at your retrospective EPOS data will really help when pre-booking your apparel ranges. The data may tell you that on average you sell more large and extra-large tops than mediums and smalls. If this is case, buy accordingly. Preparing for each buying meeting only takes a few minutes but will make a huge difference in whether you are over-stocked or under-stocked. Your standard core colours, like white, black, and navy should also be injected with vibrant colour and prints. Remember to think wider than your own personal preference for clothing when buying in apparel ranges. We are all different!

Using your knowledge
You know so much about your customers so use it to your advantage. Big high street retailers would love to have the amount of knowledge you possess about consumers. For example, if you know that a group of customers loves a particular brand, send those customers a message informing them that the new range is arriving, and ask if they would like you to put something aside for them to look at when they are next in the shop. This shows that you know them, and you’ll go the extra mile to help. You wouldn’t believe how many items you can sell even before a product hits the shelves.

Enticing Displays

Take inspiration from places where you shop. The high street rarely gets it wrong when displaying clothing. The old retail saying of “eye-line is buy-line” still rings true, so in that space make sure you are exciting your customers using mannequins for outfitting with appropriate linked purchases surrounding. Under the eye-line make it easy for your customer to shop with colour and size blocking using a d-rail.
In addition, make sure you utilise the support available from suppliers with the use of their Shop-in-Shop solutions (SiS). The SiS concept is extremely powerful and will be visually impressive to the customer.

Marketing

Does your in-store display and apparel offering align with your digital marketing or any campaigns that you are running? If you utilise digital marketing channels such as a website, a newsletter, and social media, are your content pieces coordinating with your in-store offering? In order to maximise a sales opportunity you need to make sure your buying and marketing is coordinated and your in-store and digital presence are matching up. Therefore your customer will experience the full marketing journey and you will have planted the seed many times through your marketing channels.

Secondly, launching your new apparel ranges using multiple marketing channels is crucial to sales success. Foremost golf professionals utilising the EMP Premium marketing programme receive huge assistance on this front. A team of Marketing Editors build and execute marketing plans for all EMP Premium members. They do this with an array of instore and digital personalised marketing tools that maximise product exposure.

Club Crested

Members resonate with your club’s logo so make sure you use it. Create an in-store display that can showcase your club crested clothing to its best. Club/brand crested product has many advantages. Firstly, golfers, like many other sportspeople, like the association of being attached to a club or team. Secondly, by having a logo present on your apparel your customers are marketing the golf club and business for you when they wear the product away from the golf club/facility. GR

For further information on how Foremost Golf can assist you and your business in 2023 simply email membership@foremostgolf.com or call 01753 218890