Hardware Retailing The Industry's Source for Insights and Information
Spring is a great season to breathe new life into merchandising. As days get longer, foliage is starting to bloom and customers are ready to get outside. For retailers, this is a great time to revive displays and bring in fresh, fun merchandise. As you source outdoor living goods for spring, there are a few key aspects to keep in mind.
For your key vendors of grass seed, fertilizer, controls and soils and mulches, you should already have had seasonal bulk buys in place a few months ago. Arranging truckloads, nailing down the marketing and merchandising plans and negotiating for maximum marketing support from these vendors should be wrapped up in the late fall. It doesn’t hurt to dust off those 2026 plans, confirm with suppliers and see if there’s any additional support you can get before the season gets into full swing, as sometimes vendors will have additional funds for event support or other initiatives that have emerged since the fall.
Maintain a positive personal working relationship with your top five spring vendors and brainstorm with them about what they have seen work elsewhere. Make sure they know you’re looking out for their brand in your stores. Vendors love to work with retailers who care about representing their brand well and will go the extra mile to support you.
All that fall planning doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of special offers at the early spring markets. Now is a great time to add some color and splash to your main aisle or bulk display areas. The extra foot traffic of spring is a great opportunity to generate impulse sales with a spinner of gloves or small gardening tools. Decorative planters and pots can be a great compliment to a nice live goods presentation. If you’re not doing live goods yet, consider adding them. They offer an amazing opportunity to increase average sales and diversify the market basket for your customers.
Shop the pallet and special buy areas at the show, and keep an open mind as you weave through the offerings. A $300 to $600 rack of something fun can add some vibrancy to your standard displays and create an opportunity to capture impulse sales in adjacent or new categories that you wouldn’t necessarily put in line with your core departments. Try to avoid displayers with 100 SKUs, as they create a lot of work in data setup and pricing. Think of these spring displays as “in and out” items that you’ll stock for the season and then let them go without adding to your normal run of products. Keep an eye on them during the season, and if they don’t start moving within the first month or two, mark them down 20% and move them out faster. There’s no need to hang onto a slow spring item into the fall. If the spinner is looking sparse, move the remaining products to an endcap to finish them out. Selling the last 10% to 20% of the inventory at half off is a great way to end the season clean and cash out.
Keep a lookout for items with cool new features. For example, bypass loppers are my kryptonite; I think I have at least four of them in the shed. Extended handles, extra gears to increase leverage and titanium coating are all cool features that make another pair a fun purchase. Find exciting new takes on standard tools, but watch the price points. Splurging at $29.99 might be palatable, but $49 might be too much for an impulse tool purchase in your market.
Spring is a great time to experiment. If a new buy turns out to be a slow mover and you end up marking it down to clean it out, don’t consider it a failure. You added life to a dull category and made some customers happy. With a reasonable amount of caution, you can pretty easily avoid losing money and you may just hit it out of the park. Obviously, being able to replenish from the warehouse is a big plus in case you add a new winner. But I wouldn’t let that stop you from trying new things. Avoid doing drop-ship replenishment orders on these types of items unless they turn into a runaway hit. It’s rarely worth the operational cost to keep that impulse item in stock for a long period of time. Blow it out and move on to grab the next winner. Use this time to keep the assortments looking fresh and new and keep the customers’ interest to keep coming back.
If you’re a multistore operation or have staff you’re bringing to a show, use this opportunity to have them pick out products they would like to sell in their store. Once a store leader commits to a purchase, they almost always make sure it sells. You can put the same spinner in five similar stores, and it will always be the store leader that picks it out that makes sure it sells out. It’s a great way to get buy-in participation from team members who may not officially make purchasing or merchandising decisions normally.
Also, have these employees engage with vendors in booths by suggesting they find the next hot new item, or maybe a hot item you don’t have in your stores yet. Multiply your efforts by having others do some of the legwork at the market.
One word of caution, learned after working many dozens of trade shows: if a product has to be demonstrated to sell, proceed with extreme caution. Demonstrations are great at shows and attract a lot of attention, but after the demo is done, picture that item on a shelf or endcap in your store and see if it tells a compelling enough story that customers will pick it up on their own. Encouraging staff to engage with customers and show them cool new products is great, but in the busyness of the spring traffic influx, it’s probably not going to happen enough to move a product that totally relies on a demonstration.
Finally, have fun at the markets. The craziness of spring is right around the corner and the energy coming from customers emerging from hibernation will hopefully power you through the long hours and moving all those pallets of bagged goods. Enjoy the time with vendors and other retailers and prepare to make a difference in your store aisles every day. Serious purchasing planning for the big items, along with a little experimentation with new ones, will combine to make 2026 a great spring season.
