Harry & David Leverages Traffic Data To Boost Sales

By Bob Johns

November 2013 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

The fruit-and-food gift retailer uses in-store and retail-complex traffic data to make intelligent decisions for the stores.

Harry & David, one of America’s premier marketers of fruit and food gifts, faced a big challenge — how to tell if its stores were performing above or below standard. “Every location is different, so strictly going off of sales and conversions only gives us half of the picture,” says Jeff Lynn, manager of operations analysis — sales and marketing at Harry & David. The company already had a great view into online sales, but the stores were a different matter entirely.

Harry & David grew out of the family orchard business to become one of the largest direct marketers of fruit and food gifts, along with 50 retail locations. This ironically sprouted out of the Great Depression. The story goes that, in 1934, brothers Harry and David Rosenberg made trips to San Francisco and New York to pitch their mail-delivered pears as ideal business gifts. This led to an entirely new business for the brothers, and now the company is one of the oldest mail-order companies in the U.S. The company did over $380 million in sales last year, and is on target for 6 percent growth year over year.