Retirement sale!


Most of the action for today is at Toxophily, where I show off my beautiful red fulled bag. But here's a tidbit for those of you who don't care about knitting.

On Sunday, scraping the bottom of our long-holiday-weekend bag of tricks, we went to a local toy store that is going out of business. The place is great -- an entire wing of a strip mall given over to toys, baby clothes, and parenting paraphernalia. The neon-colored signs blazoned over every window proclaim that it's a retirement sale. We browsed for nearly an hour while the kids played happily on the train tables. When we left we were loaded down with workbooks, a Leapfrog Twist-and-Shout math game, a dress for Cady Gray, some cute fish castanets, and a Melissa and Doug wooden cooking set.

But alongside the cut-price goodies was an elaborate sale-promotion system run by an enthusiastic man in a green suit. After your purchases get rung up, you bring your receipts over to his little table, which is. surrounded by the free prizes you can win (a TV, a grandfather clock, etc.). He exclaims over how many points you've earned and how close you are to winning the stuff.

We went back in today to get some more workbooks (the kids gave us a good ninety minutes of trouble-free coloring and math time on Monday, and that's something a parent craves). The sale organizer was right there at the door looking up our point total, telling us we were in the top ten, and cluing us in on how to get 10,000 free points by finding the two mystery sale items marked by pink tags.

The guy didn't seem to be a regular employee; today he was explaining something about the sale system to the gray-haired proprietress while we browsed. He's more like The Slasher, the used-car mercenary in John Landis' fascinating documentary who gets called in to run special promotions and move the inventory with every trick in the book. I was not aware that such a professional calling existed in the toy-store-closing field, but Green Suit Guy has convinced me that it does.

Now I am not a fan of the hard sell. More than once we've refused our businesses to companies that offered what we wanted but insisted on wasting our time with tactics. And just yesterday, we wandered into a furniture closeout place to look for a bed for Cady Gray, and left having decided to buy something there because (a) the prices were right and (b) they didn't bug us.

Nor do I want the TV (a medium-sized CRT model) or grandfather clock they're giving away at the toy store. But I find their sale strategy rather charming. I'm bemused by the sight of this high-energy dude yammering his spiel in a little room crowded with Beanie Babies and dollhouse furniture. I don't mind going back in there and buying more $1.50 phonics primers even though he's going to take me over to the mystery item and explain how the special price is good for today only. There's something about the application of these hoary sales techniques to Thomas the Tank Engine that fascinates me.

Have you encountered unusual retail promotions that appear to be run by out-of-towners? How do you respond to sales gimmicks and salesmen?

Posted: Tue - May 29, 2007 at 07:34 PM         |

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