Industry Insight : Accessory Products: 
Still the Heart of the Sale

Handled correctly, this category can make your year.

At three-and-a-half, my niece Mae already gets it. She meets me at the door wearing a long string of purple beads, fashionably mismatched Crocs and a big bright yellow bow holding back her blonde curls. She immediately notices my new earrings and grabs my multi-colored bag saying, "I love your purse, Auntie. It's pink, green, blue, yellow and red ... all my favorite colors."

Mae has already demonstrated that she has the accessory gene. Too bad she isn't old enough to work retail yet.

Without important accessories, the products you sell don't do all they're supposed to do. On the mobile side, take the almost ubiquitous iPhone. That, and its iPod and iTouch cousins, are probably the most accessorized products ever made. First, there are cases and holsters in every configuration and color. Designers like Coach have climbed on the Apple bandwagon, combining their signature designs with the hard-to-miss iPhone style.

And how many of us have scrapped expensive audio systems, opting instead for iPod docking stations? My new car even has an adaptor for my iPhone so I can listen to my favorite music anywhere.

Go a step further, and what's really made the 
iPhone unique is the myriad of applications available to "accessorize" it. Without Urban Spoon, Flight Tracker and Yelp, it's really not much better than any other smartphone. Load it full of apps, though, and the iPhone is a teaching, entertaining, calorie tracking, travel enhancing wonder.

CEA predicts that accessory sales, growing at nearly 10 percent a year, will reach well over $700 billion this year. Entire CE companies, like Monster, have built their business strategies around providing the products consumers need to enhance their viewing and listening experiences.

Savvy retailers are helping to educate their customers on how imaging and mobile accessories can lift the hobby to new heights. They can open up new creative doors and take image capture, in both the traditional sense and the newer mobile world, in entirely new directions. Increased accessory sales are the ultimate win-win-win. Customers win when they get the gadgets that enhance the performance of the new gear. Sales associates win with additional commission opportunities and more loyal customers. And management wins with added profits. Like any other product category, you'll have to develop a solid game plan to increase accessory sales.

• Prominently display accessories. Scatter displays throughout the store. Place accessory items with some of the larger ticket items they enhance and explain why with proper signage. Don't forget to put some impulse items near your cash-wrap counter. Keep the displays clean and well-stocked.