Valentine’s Day gives retailers a chance to provide a premium offer, as well as help with convenient, last-minute purchases, as the Better Retailing team finds out.
Akshay Patel, Londis Towpath, Croydon: “We offer seasonal lowers, along with special chocolates. We also have a special gift offer, which is a hamper box that we can ill up in store with chocolate, prosecco, teddy bears and things like that. We retail it at 25 and we’ve been doing it for a few years now. We stole the idea from someone on Instagram. The good thing is that if it doesn’t sell, we can just put the products back on the shelves after Valentine’s Day is over. “We pick stuff up and start selling them about two weeks prior to the occasion. That’s the optimum time to sell. We don’t get rid of the range until at least a week after because not everyone can celebrate Valentine’s Day on the actual day. “We’re inding that we’re doing more postal orders and deliveries this year, so we think this Valentine’s Day could be a bit different.”
Reuben Singh Mander, The Three Singh’s, Selby, North Yorkshire: We have plans for Valentine’s Day. We want to get some fresh lowers into the store, and do some offers on boxed chocolate and wine. It’s mostly chocolate and wine that we already have, supplemented by whatever the suppliers put out for it. “We’ll be going through promotional booklets this week to see what’s on offer. Then we’ll put up an in-store display to tempt customers passing by the shop. It will be front and centre as soon as you walk through the door. We’ll be implementing that by the end of this week. “Our suppliers have brought out a new range of cards this year – there’s a wider price range for our customers, so there are some higher-quality items and options to trade up. In the past, we’ve offered cheap-and-cheerful cards for last-minute purchases. This year, we’ve decided to start earlier and go more premium, and that should bring in a better pro it.”
Boxed chocolates price comparison 2022 UPDATE – Pricewatch
Narrinder Blaggam, Netherton Grocers, Liverpool: “This year could be another struggle because of Covid-19, but we got started on Valentine’s Day last week. It’s pretty big for our store.store. We usually get lowers and chocolate boxes, and then combine them to sell in deals for our customers. So, if you buy the lowers, an ornament or a bottle of wine, you get the chocolates half price. We’ll put everything near the front of the store and at the till. “We’re also going to do a Valentine’s meal deal, where we can add a 20 voucher for a meal at a local restaurant. The local restaurant owners do quite well out of it and we’ll be working with them, selling vouchers. It’s good to help them out because the restaurants have been struggling at the moment. This will be the irst time we’ve done it, so we’ll see how it goes. We’re also doing a raf le, so people can win 100, 25 and 15 vouchers to spend on goods for Valentine’s Day.”
Read more about seasonal trends in retail
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