How to deal with a short shelf life

Marking on the exterior of a box of Halloween merchandise at Dollarama, Vancouver

Seasonal merchandise is exactly that, seasonal. Once the season is over the merchandise loses values every day. The Halloween candies can be sold at a discount. At Dollarama the discount on Halloweeen merchandise usually 50% on November 1st. But the Halloween decorations are of almost no interest to anyone the day after.

All merchandise goes through the stages of the product life cycle; Introduction, Growth, Maturity, and Decline. And the problem for a retailer like Dollarma, that does a steady trade in seasonal merchandise, is that retail space is in short supply and once the season is over the retailer must make room for the next season, in this case Christmas.

So the worst thing that could happen is to find a bunch of Halloween merchandise on the shelves on November 1st. This sort of graphic on the cartons probably goes a long way to reducing the likelihood that the staff, probably paid close to minimum wage, will overlook boxes in the stockroom.

The best way to solve a problem is to make sure that it does not happen in the first place. I'd say task accomplished.