Fashion retailers are beginning to understand what McDonald’s has been doing for years – cross-selling pays off, especially at point of sale. The booming market of fashion fix-its has grown from an annual retail spend of $250,000 to over $10 million in the past five years and is still on the rise. According to industry specialists, the market is currently worth at least $30 million in Australia alone.
The Useful Chick Stuff Company has recently introduced fashion fix-its to the retail marketplace. By creating a new marketing lexicon, these products, formerly confined to haberdashery sections, were perceived as fashion items and moved to point of sale positioning.
In 2002, Mark Rosalky founded the Useful Chick Stuff Company as a home-run business. Today, this accessory brand called Fashion First Aid is available worldwide in stores such as Liberty of London, Harvey Nichols in the UK, Metro in Singapore, Henri Bendel in the US and Holt Renfrew in Canada and is now worth $5 million.
“Retailers are benefiting not only from sales of Fashion First Aid products but also from the increased sales of floor stock,” says Rosalky.
Rosalky estimates that the average-sized high-street store sells at least 24 units of Tapeits a fortnight, which results in a $500 profit from tape alone, not including additional sales of floor stock. This range takes up minimal floor space and works all seasons, which makes it an easy POS purchase. These low cost items provide the perfect tools to upsell fashion garments, especially those more complicated numbers (backless, scooped neckline, off the shoulders), that the customer would not have bought otherwise.
With the quirky tagline as ‘For when the Gods of Fashion decide that today is not going to be your day’, Fashion First Aid has been catapulted onto international runways from Milan to New York. Famous fans include Sex and the City stylist Patricia Fields and British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman.