By T.J. Reid, Editor of Fashion Advantage
Mother’s Day is one of my favorite holidays in the store, and it should be yours, too. You may not realize, but $16.3 billion are spent each year on Mother’s Day gifts and cards. (Card total is $133 million sold, making it the number three card holiday behind Christmas and Valentine’s Day).
And it’s not just cards they are buying; the average amount spent on mom is $126.90. That’s a lot of cards, flowers, apparel, jewelry, dinners, and weekend getaways.
Not only are folks buying for their mothers, 20 percent of all men buy for their wife, 9 percent buy for their daughters, 8 percent for their granddaughters, 7 percent for their friends and 2 percent for their grandmothers.
Although 69 percent of Mother’s Day purchases are for flowers, jewelry ranks at 11 percent and apparel comes in at 6 percent. (That’s not bad, 6 percent of $16.3 billion?). When asked, 10 percent of daughters say they would buy clothes for mother, but only 5 percent of sons agree. This is one of the reasons, retailers need to target the daughter-in-laws; encourage them to do the gift shopping. It makes more cents!
Everybody likes mothers! Ninety-six percent of all consumers take part in Mother’s Day in some form, and Mother’s Day gets 25 percent of the money spent on all holidays throughout the year. In one survey, 25 percent of mothers say they would like to receive a gift card so they could chose their own gift.
Retailers should offer special incentives for gift card purchases. Perhaps the same as we do with Valentine’s Day: offer a rose with each card. Gift wrap the card as if it were a huge gift. Make it beautiful; something she’ll be excited to open, and something she’ll love and appreciate!
In my book, What Mother Never Told Ya About Promotions, on pages 54-55, you will find a complete list of ideas for Mother’s Day events to create excitement and additional sales in your store.
To learn more about this and other promotional ideas, LIKE Fashion Advantage on Facebook. I try to post on a regular basis with new creative ways to help you entertain and reward your customers.
T.J. Reid is editor of Fashion Advantage magazine, and author of several books on successful retailing. She is a frequent speaker at the Atlanta Apparel Markets. For more information about her, please visit www.tjreid.com.
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