Ever since I opened in early April, I've felt I was about 2 - 4 weeks behind! I had items in the store that had arrived in February that ideally I would have been displaying in late February/early March (when I originally hoped the store would open).
The timing of Zoe's Summer Sale felt the same tardiness in many ways. Other stores in the area had started their Summer sales two weeks prior. Yet, at the same time, I also feel odd starting a Summer Sale when the true start of the calendar Summer was just the week before!
Knowing that I needed to start making room for my Fall shipments, I prepared for Zoe's Summer Sale to start on July 1st. Thanks to the Point of Sale system that I use at the store, I was able to start prepping several days in advance by setting up the sale categories, the dates, and the items that would be discounted. When a discount percentage is assigned to an item, it automatically calculates the discount for me so I was prepared to mark down the prices on the price tags. I also used the opportunity to apply new discounts to the remaining Spring merchandise I had in stock.
The next step was to prepare the Constant Contact email communication for those people who are on my mailing list. Constant Contact makes it easy to design the email and also to post it to Zoe's Twitter account. I also updated the events section of The Patch site for Old Town Alexandria as well as the Owner's Message on Zoe's Patch entry. Another task was to update the Events section for Zoe on the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Association website as well as update Zoe's website and Facebook pages!
On Friday morning, I came in early to mark all of the appropriate tags with the sale prices and do some remerchandising of the store. I placed the sale signs in Zoe's window and was then ready to open the doors!
I was pleasantly surprised at the number of previous customers and visitors who received the email and then came in to shop the sale!
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