Boxing Day Sales!

[Trigger Man]

I hear about the low dollar and margins being an issue affecting sales, however as I was an owner in the retail sector for a decade, I believe one should still reward their customers on a few occasions a year. That being said, the first year we had a store open we ran boxing day sales similar to how the US does black Friday sales. However we noticed all of our competitors running very low discounts and typically only on multiple item buys. What we learned is customers were going to spend their christmas money and budgeted boxing day monies regardless of whether the items were on sale during boxing week. So like most typical retail outlets in Canada, we curbed our discounts and made more profit that way (as well as near 80% of gift cards get used during Boxing week). We did however make sure to bring in a few loss leaders that we would have negotiated a great price on with the manufacturer months prior. A store can run pretty good sales a couple of times a year, however why would they if they believe their customers will be buying the items regardless of the sell price.
I went boxing day shopping at the lfs's as well, and like other customers, I bought all the items I was holding off on until boxing day, even though 90% of the items were not on sale.