Events Make Most of Short Season

How many home decor retailers view the start of deer-hunting season as a stellar marketing opportunity? In Ottertail, MN, storeowner Pam Williams knows that hunting and fishing "widows" are some of the best shoppers on the planet. To accommodate them, Williams provides the festivities and the wares that attract summer-home owners in this resort area located 200 miles from the Twin Cities. Tourists from neighboring North and South Dakota also find their way to the town of 450 year-round residents.Williams hosts a full slate of special events just about every month that the store is open to ensure that customers make the trip to The Williams Company Store, her 5-year-old business. Consider:An after-hours "girls night out" in May that coincides with the opening of fishing season. The event includes three masseuses who give hand massages with lotion samples. Williams serves tea and healthy appetizers made from food items carried by the store. She offers a 10% discount on purchases made that evening. An "herb day" on Memorial Day weekend to mark the start of the resort season. A local grower brings in plants to sell, and master gardeners are on hand to answer questions. An artist from Minneapolis (who lives in Ottertail in the summer) sells her prints of floral themes. A Fourth of July celebration with a keg of root beer and a barbershop quartet in the garden. A Labor Day weekend end-of-season clearance sale. A pumpkin-carving contest in October that generates proceeds for Habitat for Humanity, for which Williams is an area chairperson. An open house in November that coincides with the start of the deer-hunting season. Williams shows ideas for holiday entertaining and decorating, and serves treats from her gourmet food line. A five-piece band from Minneapolis performs at the event. Last year, Williams printed these events on a sheet of hot-pink paper and asked customers if she could include one in their shopping bags."I'm doing an experiment to see if the pamphlet alone generates as much business as it does in combination with print ads in local newspapers. It's the least expensive, but most effective, form of advertising that I do," Williams says. One shopper told Williams she kept the event sheet on her refrigerator all winter while she waited for the store to reopen the following spring. The Labor Day event was only publicized on the event sheet, and it was the biggest sales day of the year.The Williams Company Store is located on a street reminiscent of a town from the Old West. The building originally was a general store serving the needs of the first inhabitants of the town, more than a century ago. Today it houses 2,500 square feet of home decor, kitchen gadgets, gourmet foods and a cafe. Williams describes her business as a mix of Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma and a gourmet food store.Although Williams principally draws buyers from a 70-mile radius, she relies on lake homeowners as her primary customer base. The store is open seven days a week (9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.) from April 1 to Dec. 30. This schedule gives Williams a chance to do most of her buying at the winter gift and home markets in Minneapolis and San Francisco. Throughout the season, she reorders weekly from more than 450 vendors.The store is very low-tech. There is no point-of-sale computer register or inventory tracking. By looking at how much is on the shelves, employees know when it's time to buy more. Reorders are recorded in a neat paper filing system. When items arrive, the aim is to get the merchandise out of the shipping boxes and straight to the shelves, thereby freeing up the 400-square-foot storage space.This unpack-and-display-right-away method, carried out by seven part-time employees, works by dividing the store into 12 categories: gifts, decor, gourmet food, kitchen, clothing, bath, kids, candy, cafe sales, books, bird-related products and jewelry. Markup on all merchandise is two times wholesale plus 10% to 25%, depending on the category. A goal is to increase revenue by 15% annually. Williams also wants to revise her website and begin e-commerce activities.The most popular price points range from $15 to $30. Soaps, lotions and gourmet food items sell well. At market, Williams looks for functional items because her customers want things they can use, not collect."I'm always looking for items that are well designed, have good quality and hit that [popular] price," she says. Such products aren't always easy to find but they are out there, she says. One reason she shops the gift show in San Francisco, she says, is because [her] "customers like the hipper stuff" she finds there.Wisdom gainedFrom 1975 to 1986, Williams owned a store in Fergus Falls, 35 miles west of Ottertail. Then she learned the other side of the business by working as an independent sales rep for 15 years (mostly in Minneapolis). Williams bought and renovated her current store (she lives upstairs) and opened for business in May 2001.Her ongoing remodeling projects entice even the men (when they are not hunting or fishing) to come in and shop. For them, it's like watching "This Old House." In 2005, Williams rebuilt an old structure behind the store (called the "Bird Barn") that now gives her an additional 700 square feet of selling space and 400 square feet of storage. To lure customers to the barn from the main store, she designed a perennial garden, which also provides a beautiful setting for special events. In the barn, she sells merchandise for bird enthusiasts. She says that birding holds a lot of revenue potential.In the end, a genuine interest in pleasing customers has kept her in a stressful industry for three decades. The monthly soirees make the work more enjoyable for everyone. "I love the customer-service aspect of this industry," she says. "Stretching yourself to make people happy is very rewarding for me."