Spa Retail & Cracker Barrel

Growing you spa business during difficult economic times requires adding value to your customers' experiences. Spas that invest time and energy into creating a unique experience for their customers' are more profitable and stable through recessions. Create excitement in your lobby/retail area. Make it more inviting, relaxing, educational, interesting, or whatever your philosophy might be. The restaurant chain Crackel Barrel comes to mind when I think of a successful business creating an experience for their customers. Crackel Barrel's CEO Michael Woodhouse reports the average ticket for the 600 restaurants is $8.60, 3 percent up from the year before. Woodhouse also estimates one in three customers makes a retail purchase with the average price of the retail ticket at $4.00. While restaurants are complete different businesses than to spas and salons, the principle still applies. Most people believe Crackel Barrel to be a restaurant, when in reality they are a gift shop that serves food.

Like Crackel Barrel has done, analyze how you can get 20-30% of the people who come in for food (or in your case a spa treatment), make a purchase as a gift or for themselves in retail products. Is your spa an escape from reality to your customers? Evaluate how your retail lobby/retail area makes your customers feel. What is the first thing your customers see? What is the temperature relative to outside? What does it smell like in your entrance? Is there too much or too little light in the store? Music playing? All of these things make gigantic influences whether people will make a retail purchase in your spa or not. Take a huge inventory of everything about your lobby/retail area and create an online survey through http://www.surveymonkey.com/, blast that survey to every email address you have. Take the data and act! For example, if you figure out you must increase your gift purchases by 15% next quarter, have a free elegant gift wrapping service with purchases of $20 or more. Do away with all of the not so good impressions of your spa, and replace them with better experiences for your customers. Certain habits or things we force ourselves to stop doing are sometimes the most cost effective way of increasing sales for your spa retail store. Good Luck & please share your success stories with us!