Accessories may be small in size. But they’re big business providing retailers with a very welcome margin. They are also fast-moving and not price-sensitive, advises Jesper Starup, AM area manager, UK and Ireland.
Just consider the enormous £5-billion consumer electronics market in the UK and the fact that there are accessories for every single product category and you will begin to get the picture. Accessories are good news for everyone.
They are good for consumers because they enhance their enjoyment of the original purchase. And they are good for you, the retailer, because they give you healthier profit margins. And last, but by no means least, they help to increase store traffic, especially in the case of cleaning products, which require refills.
Importantly, they give you the independent retailer an excellent opportunity to demonstrate your professionalism to the customers – to explain to them how they can derive maximum pleasure from their newly acquired piece of kit with the aid of an essential accessory.
AM of Denmark is one of the world’s top specialists in cleaning products for CE and IT sectors. We also offer highly specified cables. We pride ourselves on good design, a fact endorsed by awards such as the IFA Product Design Award we won in 2007 for our Eazy Care range.
The importance of using screen cleaners is a very easy one to convey to the consumer, especially since using the wrong solution can damage a product.
And there is static to shock you. This should help you to sell more keyboard cleaners! Tests show that there are approximately 510 bacteria per square centimetre on a keyboard in a normal office environment. This compares to only 8 bacteria per square centimetre on a toilet seat.
Another key accessory category is, of course, leads. If you take a look around your store and consider the products that give you the most margin percentagewise, not surprisingly, the smallest things such as leads top the list. And yet so many retailers give away cheap leads when they sell a new flat screen. Shouldn’t they be trying, instead, to convince the consumer that by investing in a better HDMI cable they would enjoy better picture and sound quality. And the retailer gets larger margin into the bargain.
At AM we are proud that our cables offer some of the highest specifications in the marketplace. For example all our 1.4 HDMI cables offer Ethernet, whereas a lot of cheap cables do not.
How it works
But don’t take my word for it. Listen to how well some of Big Red’s customers are doing with AM products.
Dogra Electronics of Maidenhead are great fans of the products. Says proprietor Tony Dogra: “The new super thin glass TV screens attract fingerprints all over the place but you can get rid of them easily with the AM screen cleaner. In fact we get more sales by actually using the products at the time of installation as the consumer will buy one every single time once they have seen it work. It couldn’t be a better way of demonstrating the effectiveness of a product.”
In fact, Tony sells most of his AM screen cleaners this way and the extra margin pays for the free delivery service he offers for TVs. Plus, the consumers return to the shop for refills for the cleaners.
At TV Solutions in Towcester they use AM products as an incentive package to consumers buying flat screen TVs. Says proprietor Steve Gibbs: “We include an HDMI cable and scart lead along with a cleaner and it works a treat to clinch the deal”.
Vimal Arora at Hispek in St Albans considers the screen cleaner a “very easy sale”. “Once you have explained to a consumer why they need it, they will buy it,” he says. And he adds: “As well as increasing the order value it also ensures that consumers get the very best from their products”.
