8 Tips to Run a Profitable Gift Shop in Dubai

How to Start a Gift Shop in Dubai
How to Start a Gift Shop in Dubai

Are you considering opening a gift shop in Dubai? Gift shops can surprisingly be a very profitable venture, as long as you play your cards right. This business makes money by selling souvenirs, mementos, and other artifacts representing past events and memories of great significance. Tourists and collectors make up your primary market.

 With crowds of tourists flocking Dubai every year from all over the world, you are bound to make a stable income with a successful gift shop. However, you will need to use a few marketing tricks to ensure you stay ahead of the competition, as there are plenty of other Profitable Gift Shop in Dubai to contend with. This includes outstanding business marketing, quality and availability of merchandise, and proper customer engagement. You also need to be strategically positioned.

This article will equip you with eight useful tips to set up and run the ideal gift shop in Dubai.

Some of the most important factors to consider include;

  1. Choosing a strategic location
  2. Marketing your business with custom branded accessories
  3. Selling treats, snacks and essential products
  4. Providing basic and complimentary services
  5. Using technology to improve and safeguard your business
  6. Keeping your inventory dynamic and interesting
  7. Offering enticing deals and discounts
  8. You are creative with your marketing both online and on your shop displays.

Let us take a deeper look

1.      Choosing a strategic location.

Gift shops are majorly intended to serve tourists visiting designated tourist attractions and historical monuments, so they will often be located within the vicinity of one. This is the first and most important factor to consider when setting up a gift shop. Pick a strategic point to stage your business, where you will be able to easily attract tourists frequenting the area, preferably near historical museums, stadiums, and iconic buildings.

Most tourists visiting Dubai, for instance, are curious to visit the famous skyscraper Burj Khalifa, which is the tallest building in the world. Setting up your gift shop within the vicinity of Burj Khalifa will give you access to a potential market of curious tourists.

2.      Promoting your brand with custom branded accessories and merchandise

This is one way to promote your gift shop and attract more curious customers. Branding different accessories and merchandise with your business’s name and custom logo may help sell your gift shop. These may include t-shirts, cups, umbrellas, and caps. You can sell these or offer them free customer incentives for frequent and bulk purchases. This will help boost your customer turnout and ensure you maintain loyal customers.

3.      Selling treats, snacks and essential personal effects.

Tourists are travellers far from home, and there is a thing or two they are bound to forget to carry and are in urgent need of. Please take advantage of this opportunity to save them conveniently. Offer essential effects such as toilet rolls, wet wipes, sunscreen, handkerchiefs, and even some over-the-counter pain killers and band-aids, if possible, for emergencies.

Similarly, tourists on holiday will hardly resist a cold soft drink displayed in your shop on a hot summer afternoon or a tasty snack at noon after a long morning of sightseeing, so take advantage of this necessity and offer treats and refreshments for sale in your gift shop.

You can even offer an adjacent or joint quick dine-in to offer fast food and, if your license allows, a few beers and other beverages. This way, hungry and tired tourists can sit in your establishment and dine or drink while looking at your mementos and souvenirs.

4.      Providing basic and complimentary services

Ensure always to make your customers feel appreciated and catered for, and they will be sure to come back. Offer simple and complimentary basic services such as gift wrapping, tour info, guiding brochures or guides for target destinations, and other complementary services such as courteous waiting services for coffee, pastries, cold drinks, and fast food. Be sure to help with opening soft drinks and alcoholic beverages; a little courtesy goes a long way.

5.      They are using technology to improve and safeguard your business.

Gone are when retail inventories and sale records were kept in books and paper files. To stay up in the gift shop business, you have to keep up with the evolving technology. Using monitors and tablets in the checkout process helps you provide quick and efficient service to your customers.

Have a digital POS system for your gift shop to make inventory keeping and other business metrics easier.

Technology will also keep your customers entertained and comfortable. A good air conditioning system will help Freezone Business Setup customers escape the hot summer afternoons outside. You can also offer complimentary Wi-Fi as a customer incentive.

With technology, you can keep your store under constant CCTV surveillance and get a good anti-burglary security system to keep your investment safe.

6.      Keeping your inventory dynamic and interesting

Offering a wide variety of merchandise will attract the curiosity of customers. Suppose you frequently stock your shelves with different types of coveted artefacts. In that case, you can have customers coming back to check out what new items you have to offer, and this will help you distinguish yourself from the monotony of most gift shops in Dubai.

You need to understand what customers need depending on the year and be creative in offering it to them. You need to offer appropriate merchandise for both winter and summer and spring, autumn, and fall-themed vacation tourists. This flexibility will make your gift shop a go-to destination within no time.

7.      Offering enticing deals and discounts

Gift shop products tend to be rather expensive due to their proximity to high-value tourist destinations. Therefore, this tactic is quite vital to the growth of your business. Offering enticing discounts, deals and limited-time offers will attract more customers to your venture and convince them to buy from you.

Offer discounts and free product incentives for bulk purchases and frequent loyal customers. This will encourage tourists to buy as many of your goods as possible and guarantee a frequent flow of customers to your enterprise.

8.      Creative marketing

Proper marketing is essential to growing your customer turnout. Advertise your shop with creative, colourful and pictorial posters strategically displayed in prime tourist locations. Get a large, colourful and captivating display sign for the front of your gift shop.

If possible, paint your shop with various bright themed colors to make it easily noticeable. Notably, your gift shop should give as much open or glass displays as possible to make the artifacts easily viewable.

More importantly, online marketing is equally important in such a digital generation. If possible, create a website for your gift shop where customers can view your items and prices online. Also, create vivid advertisement posters and videos online to promote your business.

Conclusion

Running a gift shop in Dubai is quite profitable, as the city gets a steady supply of tourists annually from worldwide. However, you need to stay the best ahead of the rest in terms of strategic positioning, favourable pricing, and appropriate customer service and engagement. It would be best to External Audit in Dubai stay flexible and updated with your merchandise.

Gift shops make fewer sales than other retail businesses, so you need to be intelligent with your pricing to make the most out of your sales without scaring off customers. Serve your customers well and add incentives and complimentary services to attract and maintain customers. If run correctly, your gift shop can cover all your costs and make you a handsome profit