Winter 2006

Happy Holidays By Patricia Norins

Fall is here and Halloween is around the corner, which can only mean one thing—it’s time to shift your retail strategies into high gear for the 2006 holiday season! And while you are doing just that, in this issue we show you how to keep the ca-ching in the New Year and beyond.

Our feature ‘A Healthy Bottom Line’ looks at hospital gift shops and found that with high merchandise turnover and dedicated volunteer staff in many instances, hospital gift shops are attractive business opportunities. This feature is part of a regular series of reports we plan on the rewards and challenges of different categories of gift shops. We hope you can use the insight you gain from these reports to strengthen your bottom line.

Tabletop is taking a turn toward casual chic. Our feature details the trend and tips on how to effectively cash in on it. And our piece on weddings gifts and favors outlines recommendations for products you can stock now to be a part of the booming weddings market. The feature also details what you can do, in a market saturated with competition, to attract brides-to-be to your store. As an independent retailer, you’ll find much to coo over in our feature on baby gear, and also get ideas on how you can cash in on this growing retail segment.

To our delight, we met many of you during the summer shows. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your invaluable ideas and feedback with us. As you know by now, we try very hard to include voices like yours in our pages.

Remember that GIFT SHOP is for and about you, and there are many ways you can participate in its pages. We are especially looking for retailers to be a part of our Retailer Forum; please contact our managing editor, Poornima Apte, at papte@giftshopmag.com if you would like to participate.

Here’s wishing you a joyous and profitable holiday season, and hoping you rake in enough holiday green to truly make it the most wonderful time of the year!

– Patricia Norins, Publisher, GIFT SHOP

Patricia Norins

Norins is the founder and publisher of two national trade magazines and two trade shows. Specialty Retail Report, the voice of the specialty retail industry (carts, kiosks and temporary in-line stores) has a readership of more than 75,000 and GIFT SHOP, the magazine for independent gift shop owners, has a readership of more than 60,000. She also serves as consultant to small independent retailers across the country.