ASD/AMD Marketplace - Summer 2008 - (Page 46) Feature: Merchandise Switch It Up By renee M. Covino C ustomers can be seen leaving c-stores with tobacco, beer, bottled water . . . and guitar picks? Adding such an item to the mix isn’t all that strange for c-stores that appreciate the gross margin and impulse value of novelty general merchandise. In fact, select 7-Eleven stores are currently selling out of Hot Picks guitar picks, according to Stephen Key, CEO of the Turlock, Calif.-based Hot Picks USA. It wasn’t that 7-Eleven planned for successful sales in guitar picks — but the chain is open to unique impulse opportunities. When Key approached his local 7-Eleven with a box of the picks, the manager agreed to a test run. A couple of days later, a friend stopped into the store and reported back to Key that he didn’t see the guitar picks out anywhere. Key returned to the store “with my tail between my legs,” he said, expecting bad news. Instead, he was told the store had sold out of his unique novelty items in about 48 hours. That one 7-Eleven store in California carrying Hot Picks soon expanded to three stores in the area. Now, “about 30 stores from Fresno to Sacramento to Monterey” have ordered and reordered the guitar picks, Key reported. (Hot Picks can also be found nationally at Wal-Mart, but at this point, 7-Eleven is the only convenience chain to have picked them up in select stores.) General merchandise can be the most profitable category in a c-store, but it requires open merchandising and constant rotation of product mix 46 Summer ‘08
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