How would you increase sales at a failing pet food store?

[sameferg]

I have friends who opened a pet food store. They invested a lot of money and are unfortunately struggling. They believe the main cause of their failing business is the location: They are not seeing the forecasted traffic or the growth in their location. Unfortunately they are in a lease that they cannot break.

Any ideas???

[Doktor Evil]

Maybe add services to attract customers ? Pet grooming or pet boarding?

Run ads in local papers with special sales to try and attract new customers.

[lloyd]

It depends on their capital reserve. If they have money left, they have more options.

1. They could move. They can always break a lease. There's no lease you can't break. It might be expensive, but if staying equals closing, that's going to be more expensive.

2. They can add signage on the nearest main thoroughfare. If they're on a road with 20,000 ADTC (average daily traffic count), but they're 6 blocks from a street with 40,000 ADTC, then a billboard might be an easy fix. A sign-waver might help.

3. You can make an out-of-the-way location work, but it requires you to become a destination location. You can't have an impulse store in a location like that. Give people reasons to go there. Events and services work great for that. Pet training, pet grooming, or the hot new thing: pet dying. Yes, people are dying their cats and dogs to look like tigers or leopards.

4. They really need to know their customers. One of the most important things to discover is where their customers are immediately before shopping. Do they come from home or work? How far? Which direction? That will give them information they can use regarding their paid advertising, like direct mail.

If they don't have any cash left to initiate any of these options, it gets more difficult.

1. They can increase social media fairly easily. It just takes time. If they don't have a Facebook page, they need one. Create a Foursquare location, a Twitter account, a Google plus page, a Pinterest page, a newsletter (using some free service like MailChimp), a Youtube account, and do a reddit IamA. Update them several times a day. The newsletter should be once/week. Use Hootsuite or another service to consolidate your social media in one site.

Mix up the media: use pictures, articles, personal tidbits like anniversaries, and videos.

2. Print ads are pretty cheap. It's usually the delivery method that's expensive. The owners can go in an hour early and hand out flyers to nearby businesses.

3. Check other factors. Don't assume it's just one thing. Does traffic flow naturally through the store? Is stuff sold to kids at their height? Are the shelves full and fronted?

That's all I have right now.