The one department that I had worked in retail the most was Luggage. When Macy's took over Rich's, they did away with the Lamp Department. I had turned that dept. into the number one Lamp Dept. in all of Rich's. With Lamps gone, I was moved to be the sales associate in Luggage.
At the time, Luggage was located in a small corner of the store near the break room. This is where it was when I worked there the first time at Rich's. It was in an area near the manager's office, so he/she saw me every day. You just couldn't hide out from the bigwigs. As I started selling Luggage at Macy's, I achieved some success. The sales reps already knew me from my previous work in Luggage, and they knew that I knew something about the product. My supervisors weren't very pleased that I knew more than they did, but it worked out well with the higher ups. I started making sales so much that the store awarded me with new fixtures for the department. I started selling so much Luggage that eventually the store saw that I needed more floor space to expand the selection, so they moved the department to an area twice the size as where I had been. It was actually in the same area as Lamps had been. I was named "The Luggage King of Columbia."
There were other Luggage stores in Columbia, and I would refer customers to them, as long as they would also refer customers to me. That relationship worked out well. I immersed myself in how bags were made and which ones would tear up faster than others. Most companies would offer "lifetime warranties" on the bags. It wasn't your lifetime. It was the lifetime of the bag. Hardside lifetimes were around 15-20 years. Softside bags ranged from 2-7 years. And one cool thing was that if a customer wanted to use the warranty, they would have to ship it back to the manufacturer themselves, and most people didn't want to do that. Of course, Macy's policy was that they would take back anything. I didn't adhere to that policy much.
My sales techniques were very successful. The first thing I would ask a customer was were they flying or driving. If they said "flying", then I would move them to the more expensive bags. If they said "driving", then they could pick any bag including those that were very cheaply made. If a customer was flying but didn't want to pay top dollar for a bag, I would tell them the story that happened to me in Frankfurt, Germany.
I was getting my suitcase off of the carousel at the airport, but my clothes came out before my bag did. I told them that I had to get a belt and tie it around my bag, because the locks had broken. It was a true story, but it made the customers think that they didn't want my experience to happen to them. They would then buy the more expensive bag. There was something else that I had to tell the customers, and that was that I had some ethics. I was always truthful with the customers, and I would tell them that if their bag broke coming off of the carousel, the first one they would be mad at would be the airline for breaking the bag. The second one would be me for selling the bag to them. I just would rather not have to deal with that guilt. Consequently, I had very few returns. My bosses would be mad at me, because I wouldn't sell the cheap luggage which was advertised.
I also got spiffs from manufacturers for the bags I would sell in a particular brand. Sometimes, I would have customers come in, and I would try and get them to buy Samsonite, because I was getting a spiff for every bag I sold from them. The next week, a customer might come back, and I would suggest Delsey instead. They would ask why I was suggesting one over another, and I would have to make up a reason. I couldn't tell them that I was getting a better spiff from one company over another. The spiff was like a commission, and it helped out a lot with my take-home pay.
I would go to meetings in Atlanta having to do with Luggage, and I got a lot of freebies from shirts to umbrellas to accessories to bags. At one time, I had more bags than I knew what to do with. I gave a lot of that stuff away to charities.
I worked in Luggage for Macy's for about 5 years. Right before I left, my sales were so good that the Macy's Columbia store was in the top 5 in Luggage Departments for the South Region of Macy's stores, and in the top ten of all Macy's stores in the company. I was selling close to a million dollars a year in product. After I left, Luggage sort of dried up. But for me, the 6th time selling Luggage was the charm.
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