One of the best ways to keep customers from shopping the big discount and department stores is by offering a free gift wrapping service. Most chain stores have gotten away from this service. However, busy consumers welcome free gift wrapping to save them time and money.
Money spent on packaging will be a good return on your investment because of the sales you wouldn’t have had otherwise. If you are not currently offering gift wrapping here are some tips from some of our customers.
Set up a designated area for a gift wrapping station. Over The Top Boutique in Hendersonville, TN uses a back room with a long counter space along with gift wrap paper cutters, a tissue paper rack and ribbon dispensers to keep everything handy.
The Gift Shoppe at Perkins Drugs and Patricia Jane and Company both utilize a small space behind the checkout counter. These areas are neatly organized with all their gift wrapping supplies including stacks of gift bags, ribbon, gift boxes, personalized labels, tape dispensers and scissors.
Make sure your packaging includes Christmas, wedding, baby, feminine, masculine and kids designs. To save money, you can get cutter box sizes of gift wrap for these. Or you can simply use a solid color bags and change up the tissue paper colors or prints.
Advertise your free gift wrapping by placing a sign in your display window and at the cash register along with a sample wrapped gift. With every sale, ask the customer if they would like their purchase gift wrapped. If you do print, radio or TV advertising also mention your free service there.
For those of you with a Facebook fan page or email newsletters, show pictures of items gift wrapped and mention your service. Also, if you Twitter send out message about it.
To encourage customers to think of items for gifts, wrap some of your merchandise in clear cello with ribbon. This is a great way to move product.
Keep a couple items of your most popular merchandise pre-wrapped for “Gifts to Go” so that hurried customers can grab a gift and be out the door. This saves both of you valuable time.
Finally, make sure your wrapped gifts have a custom printed label. This will promote your business with the gift recipient and you just may gain a new customer.
Great personalized service is what will set your business apart. Remind your customers to shop local to keep their sales tax dollars at home with store owners who care about their community.
Kathy Green & Buffie Baril
Marketing Dept.
We are a gift shop that specializes in gift baskets, but we have considered offer gift wrapping services for a fee for items that were not purchased at http://www.basketpizzazz.com. Has there been anybody out there that has had good results with offering that service? Is is even profitable?
I see quite a few Internet marketers offering gift wrap. I purchased something from an ETSY shop and it came in a lovely sheer bag. Another purchase was actually wrapped with a bow and everything. Barnes & Noble will wrap your Internet order for a small fee. Just because you are mailing your product, don’t rule out giftwrap.
I wish we could offer a gift wrapping option, but we are all internet based, with no store-front (yet), but if there *was* a way to offer it, I’d definitely do it. I just don’t think we could properly gift wrap all of our bath and body products to where it would fit into the USPS flat-rate boxes well 🙁
But, if we ever do open a store-front, this is definitely an awesome idea!
🙂
I love Nashville Wraps! My brothers and I own a Wine, Spirit and gourmet food/gift store in Paducah, KY. I have been a Nashville Wraps customer for several years. They have great products and a very helpful staff! We do offer free gift wrap to our customers, and we currently have that painted on our store window for the holidays. But thanks for the suggestion…we always welcome tips to keep our business fresh and our customers happy!
We offer free gift wrapping every year! It’s fun too!! We’ll definitely have to get the free labels next time.