Hardware Retailing The Industry's Source for Insights and Information
Serving as a key driver of customer counts and transaction size, promotions bring customers into your store and encourage them to make more or larger purchases. As the busy summer selling season wraps up and retailers begin to promote upcoming holidays and fall maintenance projects, Hardware Retailing compiled a list of 10 promotional ideas for the upcoming months and ideas to get customers in the door and making additional purchases throughout the year.
$10 Propane Tank Refills
Around Memorial Day weekend, Koopman Lumber runs a promotion where customers can fill a 20-pound propane tank for $10, half off the normal $20 cost. Additionally, customers receive a $10 Koopon for each tank filled, with a limit of two Koopons per household. That Koopon can be used on a future purchase during the two weeks after Memorial Day weekend at any of Koopman Lumber’s 12 locations in the Northeast.
Grill Bundles
TNT Ace, with two locations in Wisconsin, offers a grill bundle with the purchase of a grill that includes a TNT Ace gift card, a TNT Ace goody bag, free fuel and free assembly and delivery. A number of retailers also offer grilling demonstrations and events to promote the grills they sell and team up with a chef at a local restaurant to offer demonstrations of meals customers can prepare on the grill. Another idea: set up a small group of grills in your parking lot and provide hot dogs and hamburgers for your customers to grill so customers can compare products and experience the features of each grill themselves.
Valentine’s Day Rose Sales
Busy Beaver Home Centers, which has 19 locations in the Pittsburgh area, runs a Valentine’s Day rose sale each year. The stores collect pre-sale orders from early January through a few days before Valentine’s Day. Customers can choose between one dozen red roses or one dozen assorted colored roses and pick them up at their local store on Feb. 13 or 14. Each dozen roses also comes with a free Valentine’s Day card, all for $17.99.
Pet Adoption Events
Especially helpful if you have a pet supplies department, pet adoption events not only bring customers into the store, they help support local organizations and the community. At Nelson’s Ace Hardware, the pet adoption event includes the opportunity to adopt local dogs with every adoptive family going home with a $100 store gift card. For every $5 donated to the local shelter running the event, attendees were entered to win a Yeti cooler. Retailers who host pet adoption events can also offer deals on pet supplies, foods and accessories.
Back-to-School Promotions
Print off the school supply lists of every local public and private school in your area and make those available to customers. You can also post the lists in the store, along with all of the items on that list that your store can fulfill. Kane’s Ace Hardware in Homosassa, Florida, hosts an annual school supply drive where customers can not only shop for their own school supplies, but also purchase supplies and donate them to local schools.
Off-to-College Kits
Students heading off to college will need a lot of the items you may be able to provide, such as storage and organizational products, lamps, small appliances, fans, packing tape and batteries. Consider putting together an off-to-college kit with a few of the essentials they’ll need, which you can sell as a package like at Woodstock Hardware in Woodstock, New York. College students can choose from seven different kits—including cleaning, laundry and organization—that are available for pick-up in store or shipped free to customers.
Military Discount
Rather than just offering straight percent-off discounts to military members and first responders, take it a step further and offer designated parking spots for military veterans like Valle Vista Home Center in Hemet, California.
Battery Recycling Services
Connelly’s Hardware & Rental in Fort Wayne, Indiana, serves as a drop-off location to recycle alkaline, lithium, lithium-ion, and rechargeable household batteries. Not only does serving as a recycling drop-off location provide a much-needed service to the local community, customers often purchase batteries while they are in the store to replace the ones they dropped off for recycling.
Severe Weather Preparedness
Along with providing helpful and potentially life-saving information on how to prepare for severe weather—from hurricanes to tornadoes to blizzards—retailers can sell the products customers need to stay safe. Hagan Ace Hardware, with 11 locations in Florida, offers a Hurricane Preparedness page on its website with emergency plan best practices, supply checklists and tips to prep the house before storm season and stocks all those items to keep customers ready for storm season.
School Spirit Wear Sales
If your town has limited places where residents can purchase school spirit wear, ask the school if you can partner with them to sell logoed hats, shirts and other school spirit paraphernalia. Selling the team colors of your local professional and college teams is also a great way to draw in new customers, like McGuckin Hardware near the campus of Colorado University does.
