To find a right toy for your kids is a real struggle for many of the parents as they don’t have any idea of these things. The babies either infant or a toddler have different choices according to their age groups and gender.
Let’s find out how these soft toys like cater pillar, cute panda, elephant, motu patlu, teddy bear and so many other characters which the playing needs of the kids going through different developmental stages of play.
Toys for kids of 0-12 Months
The baby when come to the world looks everything and his surroundings with all his senses. The blurry vision of the infants demands bright toys. Toys must be softest for the soft sensitive skin of the new member of the family. The cuddly feel of the toys will help the baby to get the sleep like someone is there lying beside him for his protection all the time.
Soft Toys for kids of 1-2 Years
Kids of this age want someone with whom they can talk, laugh, and play in short they want someone as their whole-time partner. As at this age kids started getting exposed to language of the environment around. Even at this age kids are not mature to play with some serious toys, but the kids love to play with their buddies in a safest manner.
Soft Cuddly Toys for kids 2-3 Years
Observing the actions and behaviour of family members, kids try to copy them with someone close to them and one who will be the better companion than their teddy bears at this age. Activeness of kids at this time makes them to play with their soft toys keeping them safe from the outer world danger.
Virtual Friends for kids 4-5 Years
This age of kids demand instructions among these little bundles of joys. They love to play with their toys like students play in their virtual classes, guest in their house and the list just goes on.
Game Toys for kids of 6-7 Years
At this stage kids get different interests than their previous times, kids get influenced by their peers, teachers and the society and tries this with their best friends sitting at home which is their favourite toy. With this their emotions and feelings get out of their out in a healthy way.
Soft Games for kids 8+ Years
The kid’s passion and love for their soft toys is so strong that even the adults like interests and hobbies cannot defeat it. They share all the things with their toys making them their silent best friend; they always trust this cute toy to get along with them all the time.
Just buy a soft toy for any kid of any age, keeping your confusions aside. It’s the best gifting option ever.
Soft toys are best to play with for babies. It’s because soft toys are adorable and cuddly which makes it even safe for babies and infants to play. Toys are children’s permanent companion even after they grow. This is especially for girls. They play with their toys also they laugh, talk with them and go to bed with their toy by their side.
Without thinking it twice, toys play an elemental role in the growing years of the babies. Because of the cuddly feeling from toys, toys are the favourite part of the babies and children. Soft toy means teddy bear, everybody thinks this. But there are more toys other than the teddy bear that are available in the market today.
Nowadays soft toys are made by hands and also available in many other materials. They are available as soft books, play sets, and soft blocks. Toys are safe for infants, babies and children of all ages. Toys with premium quality are made of high grade, tested materials and are completely non-toxic. Even if infants or children bite these quality toys, there is still nothing to worry about for parents as these toys are safe and non-hazardous.
There are many benefits of buying toys for your children. As they are mostly made of fabrics, and more important they can be washed when they get dust. These toys are light in weight; they don’t have any sharp or hard parts, this makes the toy perfect to use for infants and babies. Handmade toys are also in budget as they are less expensive than factory made toys. This helps you to buy more toys for your children in a small budget.
Toys can be retained for years if taken care properly and also retain their excellent condition as well. As they are devoid of any electrical or mechanical parts, there are no issues of breakdown that you have to face ever with toys. It is generally seen that these toys are handed over to the youngest baby of the family as ability to maintain these toys in the new, original form.
There are many advantages of these toys over the traditional, rubber, plastic or mechanical toys. These toys are considered to be the safest toys for your babies and children and guaranteed to keep them happy for hours and also these toys are easily available in the market today.
One of the best metrics is sales per square foot; you can use this for gauging the performance of the brick and mortar stores. These explain you about the efficient usage of the store space and also give insights to store layouts, staff performance, merchandising and more.
What is Sales per Square Foot and how can we measure it?
Retail Sales per square foot is the store’s average revenue for every foot of sales space. We can have the formula as total in-stores sales divided by selling area in square feet. Let’s us take an example, a store sold Rs 10,00,000 worth of products in its 1,000 square feet shop, then store’s sales per square foot would be:
When you calculate the sale per square foot, include all the selling areas but don’t forget to exclude the non-selling areas such stock rooms or receiving areas.
How to Increase Sales per square foot?
Increase Transaction/Basket Value
Luxurious products such as electronics stores and jewellery stores always have high sales per square feet. As luxurious products are more expensive people spend more with these retailers simply.
But those merchants or retailers who don’t have expensive products can still have high sales per square foot of the store. This totally depends on your store, so you can try one of the points given below:
Practice up-selling and cross-selling
These are the two most common tactics used to increase the transaction value and ultimately sales per square foot.
Up-selling means the price version of the product that the customer looks to buy. For example, if you are selling a car to the customer, you will try to convince the customer to purchase the higher model of the same car, to convince the customer, we can say that we are doing the up-selling.
On the other hand, Cross-Selling means selling the items that complement the product such as, if a customer is buying a purse; you can recommend them a matching wallet to buy along with.
These help to increase to add value to the purchase. But in case, you did it wrong then you may miss out the sale. This makes it more important to have good knowledge of customers as well as to have good knowledge of products before you try to up sell or cross sell.
Be Flexible with Payments
The size of the business transactions is directly affected by the budget of the consumers. So if you want to make your store with more transactions then make shopping more ‘’budget-friendly’’ at your store, this encourage the customer to spend more.
One of the ways is to provide flexible payment options to the buyers such as instalments. Consider using a solution like After Pay option, if you are not a fan of getting a full payment at the time of delivery, then give “buy now pay later” option to your customers.
Billy Parry, Head of Sales – SMB at After Pay, says that “retailers that have After Pay in-store see higher average order values than what they see with After Pay online. Giving your customers the option to pay for their purchase over time means they can buy more of what they want while being able to budget.”
Optimize your prices or promotions
Try to look after the pricing strategy that can improve your sales. One of the strategies is ending prices with the number 9, so test this strategy when pricing your product or service.
This also applies to the promotion. Try more offers and discounts to see what get more sales. Various types of offers can be free gifts, loss leaders and more.
To figure out what is right for you the only way is to test various actions, measure the results, and make changes if necessary.
Improve your store layout
If your sale per square foot is not up to the mark, consider optimizing your store’s layout. Space with less area get messy or crowded which make people to go from the store, even this create difficulty for the shopkeeper to find what they want. Instruct your staff to always clear the messy space and all the products must be at their right place.
Take a walk through your store and analyse what is not working with the sales. Perhaps some fixtures need to be moved or you need to make better use of signage. Also pay attention to the smooth flow of the traffic. Do see is there any fixture or any item that is in the way? Also take a look over your best products that they are placed at the best place where customers can have a look.
Drive in-store traffic from online audiences
By attracting more visitors to the shop you can raise your sales per square foot. Always note this that many people browse online but many shoppers love to shop offline. For this digital marketing strategy becomes vital to put your products in front of the right audience online.
“One thing modern retailers can do to increase sales per square foot in their physical stores is to bring people in-store from online by adopting a genuine omnichannel strategy,” says Matt Warren, CEO at Veeqo.
“For example, a fashion retailer could entice browsers into their latest styles through social channels like Pinterest and Instagram. Then have them save their favourite items to a wish list or shopping basket via mobile app or online site. Before finally offering a coupon they can redeem when coming in-store to try on the items.”
“From here, making sure your store is arranged properly can be key. Knowing which items are regularly bought together and placing these close to each other can be great to increase Average Transaction Value (ATV). But also ensuring you have staffs that are well-trained in your product catalogue and able to up sell customers as much as possible can be a real game changer.”
Encourage people to come in and stick around
The more people walk in your store, the more chances for potential sales to be occurred. If your store is in a crowded place then there are more chances that people will purchase more. Shop Keepers who try to encourage customer to stick around in-store will have the chances of 20-40% more sales.
Invest in your staff
Store employees have a direct impact on the sales and customer satisfaction, so invest in the staff training and motivation over the time again and again. Without great employees, your store performance may occur, but with great employees your can also perform well.
For the increment in sales per square foot, some of the things you must do with your staff is:
Train them to get rid of their selling fear.
To demonstrate different sales scenario, role-play with them.
Educate them about the suggestive selling, up-selling etc.
Encouraging positive reinforcement and peer-to-peer recognition.
Have a winning product assortment
Don’t waste your store space with those products that aren’t selling. Always keep an eye on your store activities and use those insights that help on your product assortment decisions.
Generate reports for the time period (weekly, monthly, quarterly or half yearly), these reports help you to identify when customers are buying from you, and what they are purchasing and then stock up accordingly.
That’s what Adrienne Wiley, Owner & Operator of chic fashion boutique Covet, did in her business.
“I actually determined what I should be stocking more of in my new location based on sales by category and then fine-tuned the hours by looking at the sales by hour,” she said. Doing this helped her improve how she ran her stores, and she’s advising other retailers to do the same.
