Hair-care appliances now impulse items

Discount Store News, Oct 8, 1984 by Beth Sexer

Discounters and catalogers are watching manufacturers drive down prices of blowdryers, curling irons and styling brushes to well below $10 with unprecedented double-rebate offers.

Coupled with blister-packaged hair-care appliances selling at the checkout, such personal-care products are increasingly being promoted by discounters as impulse items.

"It's definitely a throwaway business," said Edison Jewelers & Distributors buyer Bambi Guhl, who isn't unhappy with the current situation.

Previous rebate offers were either held to one coupon usually worth, at most, $5, or double coupons for $3 with a $2 bonus. Now, with double rebates totaling up to $10 knocking down prices of hair care appliances to as low as $2.97, replacement business will pick up, said Guhl.

With manufacturers absorbing the cost of these rebates, the Texas-based cataloger still gets a 25%-35% margin on everyday-priced hair care appliances. Also, said Guhl, the rebate offers bring traffic into the store, and while sales in similar items not on rebate may lag, the chance for tie-in sales are strong.

"Now they'll spend money on hairsetters, mirrors, curling iron kits," she said.

Advertising Move

Some chains have already begun to play up the low, after-rebate prices in ads, looking for a competitive edge with added store promotions.

For Example, Caldor advertised a group of four Conair products in an August back-to-school flyer. The regularly priced $19.99 Pro Dryer, minus the chain's sales discount and manufacturer's $10 double rebate, cost the consumer a net of $4.70. The $12.99 hair dryer came to $5.70, while the $9.99 styling brush and iron came to $2.70 each after Caldor's sale and a $4 double rebate.

S. E. Nichols buyer Bernard Weiler expects that fall double rebates will give a boost to his up-to-now flat business. Yet, he also expressed mixed feelings about the administrative mess that comes with them. "The rebate story has really become unbearable . . . a nightmare," he said. "But it definitely does help; that's why we use it."

This same philosophy has sparked some retailers to latch onto blister-packed hair care appliances, a natural progression from pricing products as disposables, to packaging them as such.

Heck's buyer Bill Eades expects personal care business to grow 20% over last year, in part because of the introduction of blister-packed blowdryers, curling irons and styling brushes, which he began featuring at the checkout counter in June.

Further Attempts

"It's proven that it sells if you get it below the $10 figure to make it look like an impulse item," he said.

The chain carried Conair's 1250 watt blowdryer for $13.96 with a $5 rebate, and a $6.96 curling iron and a $7.96 styling brush, both with $2 rebates. On an ad, which he will run once this month and twice each in November and December, a $6.96 item would be marked down to $4.97, for a net price of $2.97 after rebate.

Eades said supply has almost run out, and 2,000 additional pieces were ordered with expectations of needing another recorder after that.

Blister-packed items, which retail for the same price as boxed goods and yield the same margins--38%-55% everyday--are outselling boxed goods by three to one, he added.

Not all discounters, however, are taken with the under-$10 blister-packed appliances. ALCO buyer Richard Millner said his chain's lowest-priced blowdryer sells everyday for $8.88. He considers the blister-packed appliances a duplication of inventory, and would not carry appliances both in the personal care department and at the checkout.