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In this series, I have been exploring different ideas for running creative clearance sales. Springtime is the perfect time of year to do this since customers are clearing out stuff at home they don’t need and making room for new purchases. Some ideas I have shared in Parts 1 and 2 include rearranging your merchandise display racks, setting up retail dump bins, running daily discounts, and giving customers flat-rate bags they can fill with clearance items. Here are a few more ideas you can try!

• Put together mystery packages. Use clear packaging (clear bags for example) to put together mystery packages with clearance items inside. Fill them up and sell them for a very low price. What you can do is add in a lot of tissue paper so that customers can see some of what is inside but not everything.

• Pull a discount out of a hat. Set out a hat or some other container at the register and post a sign. You might also make regular announcements over the intercom. At the register, let each customer pull out a slip of paper. Each paper will have a random discount on it. You can even have a “free” slip. So every customer shopping has a chance to get an awesome discount when they check out.

• Set discounts based on the weather. Another fun idea for doing a clearance sale is to vary the discounts based on something random which you can’t control, like the weather. This works well in spring where the temperatures can rise and fall a lot from day to day. Set a rule where you will offer 5% more off of items when the weather rises 5 degrees over a certain benchmark. So your sale might be 30% off when the weather is under 65 degrees Fahrenheit, but for every 5 degrees it rises, you will tack on an additional 5% off.

• 60% off in 60 minutes. Maybe you are marking most of your clearance items 30% off throughout the week. But pick an hour every day where you will raise the clearance to 60% off. Promote it widely, and pick an hour when a lot of people will be shopping (maybe lunchtime).

These ideas create a lot of buzz and excitement around a sale, and make it more fun for your customers than simply doing a flat rate 30% off of all clearance items. With these ideas on your side, you should be clearing off your retail display racks in no time.

What do you do with any clearance items you do not manage to sell? This is an issue which store owners debate. You may be tempted to hang onto the items and try to sell them again later so you don’t take a loss, but in a way, you already have. They are taking up valuable merchandising space on your shelves. It may be better to donate them to charity and enjoy the tax benefits.