Waimea Surf Shop
Shop Name: Waimea Surf Shop
Location: MATOSINHOS, PORTO – Portugal
What particular product has been the best seller? What’s working and what isn’t?
If we speak about technical products, we can say the best selling ones were the Snowboard gear, this season there were a lot of snow in our country and in our neighbor country Spain so that helped us a lot. If we speak about clothing, shoes are with no doubt in the top of the sales. Unfortunately Skateboard isn’t working the way it should be.
What percentage of your sales are from online business compared to your brick-and-mortar sales?
Actually, make an Online Store is our next step, we only have a Facebook page where we show our latest products, sometimes we got orders by Facebook but that’s like 5% of our total sales.
What are five products you couldn’t live without right now?
That’s a hard question since fortunately we got a pretty balanced sale in every product, but maybe shoes, caps, jeans, Snowboard and Surf accessories.
Did your store’s sales increase or decrease over last year? To what do you attribute your gain or loss in sales? What will you do to either maintain your growth or to reverse the decline?
We maintained, but that is actually good since our country is going through a lot of difficulty, we have also changed our location and that helped us reaching new costumers and winning visibility.
If you could go back five years what would you do differently?
We had already changed to our actual location…
What are the benefits of having a physical shop over simply having an online store?
The physical contact with the costumer, fast support and the most important, helping the costumer choosing the right product to his needs.
What trends do you see upcoming?
Urban Wear and the so called “SWAG” trend is growing every day, we got many young kids who come to our shop everyday to check our shoes, caps, crew-necks…
What are you doing to pull people into your store?
We try to work with our image as possible, spread the word on social networks, magazines, supporting events and the most important, if we have much product choice, a friendly and nice service, people will recommend us.
Please tell us of any upcoming initiatives your shop has planned?
We always keep in mind the promotions of the sports we love and the promotion of our city so we usually support Skateboard, Snowboard, Bodyboard and Surf events. Right now, we are planning on organize a pretty big Surf Championship in our local beach, Matosinhos.
How do you stay in touch with the wants and needs of your customers?
Always being physically in the shop, talking with the costumers, and paying attention in what they buy so the next time they come, we know what are products that fits in their tastes.
How confident are you for the coming summer?
If the weather helps, we are expecting a pretty good summer.
What kind of advice can you give other independent retailers who are trying to compete against the big box megastores?
Think that a costumer is a friend and try to have a good friendly and personal service, also, try to sell products that they don’t have in the big megastores.
