Most retail in America is promotion-driven and tied to seasons and holidays: Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Graduation, Back to School, Thanksgiving, New Years, etc.But not every company can promote around all of those seasons. For a chocolate company the main seasons are Christmas, Valentines and Mother’s Day. Many’s the small chocolatier that does banner business in those three seasons and then limps through the rest of the year.
(This is true for certain nonprofits as well. There are dozens of nonprofit ballet companies whose fortunes rise and fall for the year depending on how well their annual production of the Nutcracker does each Christmas season).
But if a chocolatier… or any other retailer… could add an extra season, well then that could be pretty sweet addition to the bottom line.
For National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Shari’s Berries, which sells hand-dipped strawberries, truffles and the like is offering a number of pink ribbon strawberry packages and other goodies, flowers, pajamas, jewelry, with 10% of the sales price going to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
Sheri’s Berries, whose sister companies include ProFlowers, Red Envelope, and Cherry Moon Farms, probably isn’t limping between seasons. But I do think that they’re on to something with this promotion. And they’re not the only retailer.
I haven’t seen any data yet to confirm it, but as we end October my hunch is that Breast Cancer Awareness Month has basically become another promotional season.
Imagine that.
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