We all love the imaginative, pristine displays at high-end retailers. But effective displays aren’t all about glamour and art – they’re primarily about selling. And there’s one simple display tool you may have overlooked while trying to push more units out the door: dump bins.
When and Where to Use Dump Bins
Dump bins have a lot of sales impact. They are best reserved for small, flexible, packaged, or not easily broken items – hundreds of them. Retail dump bins come in a range of sizes to accommodate large swaths of your stock at once.
These are great for clearance items, or to simply be rid of the remainder of one particular shipment of an item. Running low on it? You can easily install a false bottom made of cardboard or interior shelving in your large dumpbins and put the stock on top, giving the illusion that there’s plenty. Furthermore, you can insert dividers inside to categorize items if necessary.
Dump bin stock is dead-easy to maintain: you are not expected to stack or arrange these items. This saves considerable manpower time usually dedicated to keeping displays orderly.
And customers really like this informality in presentation. It says, “Buy it – it’s no big deal!” Placing dump bins at end caps and at the end of register aisles presents an opportunity to boost a customer’s total amount spent in a matter of seconds. It’s a great way to make a small, often overlooked item instantly visible.
Dump Bins: Tips for Further Success
The first step to dump bin success is admitting when it’s not working. If you’ve placed a dump bin of candy at the end of the candy aisle and no one’s biting, move the dump bin over a few aisles. This way, it attracts those who “forgot” or were avoiding the candy aisle.
It’s also good to switch dump bins around every week or so. All customers have a unique way of traversing a retail space, and you don’t want them to become used to seeing that one item in the same place each visit. Introduce them to new products in new spaces.
In addition, use signage to rely information about the item, or to further provoke purchase. “Clearance” for example, tells customers that if they don’t grab it now, they may never get a chance to do so.
While it’s preferable to merely “dump” the items in, do not dump multiple items in different styles that have different uses in one bin – even if they’re the same price. Depending on your store, your customers may not have any interest in digging around the find the exact item they want. Instead, employ multiple dump bins and categorize like items.
The name doesn’t sound very appealing, but the key with dump bins is to finally let go of the retail details. Keep it visible, make it accessible, present that informal offer to purchase, and customers will feel comfortable grabbing it up and moving on.
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