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Marketing Strategies ● 165
something easy enough for an eight-year-old to use. It has to be cheap to
make but have a high perceived value. In his case, the mops cost under $5
to manufacture, but they sold for six times that much (including refills)
on the air.
Nokes said a successful infomercial sets the stage for huge retail sales.
“We went into retail stores, and during the first three months we sold one
million mops a month,” he said. “The following year we sold almost four
million units.”
His company has sold five million Smart Choppers, five million Tap
Lights, and millions of Quick Sand easy-cleaning cat boxes. He believes
infomercials are a great way for entrepreneurs to introduce new household
products.
“It doesn’t matter how good the product is if the public doesn’t know
about it,” he said. “When you have a new product, you need to educate
the public.”
GREAT
Put a Pig in Your Window
Veteran retailer Iris Fuller told me she cried for two
IDEA
hours after attending a retailing seminar by the late
Peter Glen. They were tears of joy and inspiration. “He made such a difference
in the way we did what we did,” said Fuller, who owned Fillamento, a
San Francisco boutique that closed a few years ago.
Fuller ultimately hired Glen, a former actor turned retail guru, to meet
with her staff and teach them the secrets of visual merchandising. At his
suggestion, she took all her employees to Las Vegas so they could steal ideas
from Cirque du Soleil’s magical performance.
Thousands of small retailers relied on Glen’s advice and zany ideas to
get them out of a slump. He urged retailers to set themselves apart from
their competition by creating “cheap miracles” to attract shoppers.
For example, Glen suggested tying a big ribbon around your retail
store. Put a stuffed pig in the window or a bull in your china shop—as