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Eye Openers
October 10,
2012 by in UnCategorized 
By Home Furnishings Business in on October 2012
Welcome to Home Furnishings Business fifth annual Retail Look Book. In the pages to come youll read about how various stores brought fresh thinking to bear on their business to separate themselves from the crowd.
We kick off this years Look Book with a look at ways to liven up your stores visual impact, moving beyond 20% Off Sale signs in block letters into eye-catching displays and graphics that resonate with your customers on an emotional level without emptying your bank account.
Retail showroom consultant and Affordable Design Solutions CEO Connie Post has two words for furniture retailers when it comes to visual display: modern and change.
Too many stores, she said, rely on stodgy, stale graphics that dont give shoppers much reason to get excited.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Moreover, those shoppers often see the same thing when they come through the doors, even if its been months since their last visit. Relax, you dont have to change the entire store at once. Post suggests concentrating on the first 500 to 1,000 square feet at the front.
Thats the first and last impression the customer has of your brand, she said. Its what they see when they enter and what they see when they leave, and thats the place for change.
Change can be as easy as springing for a couple of gallons of paint.
Sherwin-Williams is doing HGTV paints now, Post noted. Select some new paint colors and do co-brandingmaybe post a card saying this is an HGTV paint. Youre strengthening your brand with the HGTV association, and youre showing customers something trendy, colors theyre seeing on television. Id be doing that at least every six months.
Need an affordable way to celebrate the changing seasons?
This can be as simple as a big vase of flowers in the front of your store, Post suggested. In spring, fill it with daffodils; maybe daisies in the summer; mums in the fall. Look at the floorsyou can change out your flooring easily and not very expensively with vinyl wood.
Lifestyle graphics are another way to make an impression and set an inspirational and/or aspirational atmosphere for your customers.
We recently did an update for C.S. Wo in Hawaii that concentrated on lifestyle graphics, Post said. You cater to the market, and they show lots of photos in the entrance of Asian families.
At Boulevard in St. George, UtahUtah has a large Mormon presence, and family is very importantthe graphics are all about family and holidays.
Such graphics arent dated or static. Theyre celebrating life and how the house is a home.
In the first 500 square feet, the customer knows what the home is all about, Post said. It stages the customers emotionally the moment they walk in the door.
What are some ways to lend an avant-garde, design-savvy look while keeping displays at a reasonable cost? How do you make it affordably stylish but not cheap?
At Delaware retailer Furnitureland, Post installed sheer fabrics as room dividers in their bedding area.
Were not talking an eight-foot square of fabricthese go to the ceiling, she said. Removing walls and utilizing drapery or sheers adds drama. ... Theyve had double-digit growth in their bedding department since we did it.
Post has designed several vendor showrooms, always with an eye toward giving retail customers ideas for visuals in their store. The Bermex showroom, for example, has muslin dining room dividers.
For Folio 21 were creating Folio Studio, a retail concept in the showroom to show bedroom and dining room, and using muslin room dividers, Post said. This doesnt have to be expensivemuslin costs as little as two dollars a yard.
LOOKING OUTSIDE
Post also pointed to retailers in other sectors who excel at visual display that doesnt break the bank.
Target comes to mind. The stores have the same basic big-box format, but when they have an event or seasonal saleback to school, saythey do it right, she said. When you come in the door you know somethings going on. Its always first-class and very modern.
With furniture, we use too many old signs. You want to celebrate seasons, events. Use a younger, hipper graphics person.
The Gap is another example.
The Gap has historically done a better job because they use graphics effectively, Post said. They show people wearing the clothes.
Yes, a retailer might say, but graphics, visual design talent cost money.
You always have the naysayers: Theyre a big chain and can afford to do all that, Post said. But in every marketplace youll find design students, colleges. Partner with local colleges, community colleges, art schools, vocational schools that teach graphic design. Give it to them as a project Tell them youll donate x-dollars to their department, award the student, have them at the grand opening.
Professors and teachers love a project that is actionable, not just theory. It also shows youre involved in the community.
HIGH IMPACT, LOW COST
In designing showrooms in High Point, Las Vegas and Atlanta for lifestyle furnishings vendor Four Hands, Visual Merchandising Manager Frances Weil incorporates a wealth of inexpensive, found materials, that bring a sense of discovery to everyday items. Its green as well, as much of the material had no destination beyond a landfill.
She calls it upcycling.
Some of the visuals Weil has produced in Four Hands showrooms can be labor intensive, but can be worked on during slow periods on the floorand give your employees a sense of teamwork and ownership in their selling space.
Its been fun for us to allow the entire office and group to work together to express their creativity and have a hand in merchandising, said Weil, who got her degree in retail merchandising and advertising from the University of Texas, and joined Four Hands upon graduation, having spent her last college internship at the compnay. They have some ownership of our showrooms.
Weil gave HFB a tour of Four Hands new World Market Center showroom at this summers Las Vegas Furniture Market to illustrate some of the ways Four Hands repurposes everyday materials and items for visual effects that dont bust a budget.
TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE
One display consisted of empty paint cans attached by their bases to a wallthe cans interiors retained the color of the paints they contained.
Those cant go into landfills, so we called the City of Austin, and they save them for us, Weil said. It gives you lots of instant color.
Old wrapping paper tubes gave a wind-chime effect further along the same wall.
Painted in any color or left in their natural state and hung with fishing line, you can use them along walls, or create a room divider for some separation of areas, Weil noted.
Sheets of old recyclable paper were painted for a graphic landscape effect. Can you get hold of some chicken wire? Weave colored tissue paper in and out of the openings, and twist it to any shape that fits your interest for a wall piece, or suspend the array from the ceiling with fishing line or wire.
An eye-catching shelf display featured origami books.
We took old books people didnt want, Weil explained. You can fold the pages in any combination of patterns.
Four Hands also incorporates old books wrapped in an assortment of colored or patterned papers on bookshelves and tables.
You can get color and design in a simple, easy way, and you can change the papers quickly for seasonal colors or other themes, Weil said. We go to Books A Million, where you can get old books by the yard. You can request certain kinds, say encyclopedias versus paperbacks.
Bottles are pretty easy to come by. Use an assortment for vases.
What happens to all the packing material at your store? Four Hands puts it to work in the showroom. One wall display consists of pleated packaging paper for an attention-grabbing texture.
As a shipping company, were always trying to re-purpose packing material in imaginative ways, Weil said.
RE-PURPOSING
Think about visual elements in already in your store and how they can be repositioned. Four Hands, for instance, had a large clock face its used on various walls in the showroom. At Las Vegas Market, Weil repositioned the clock face so it was hanging horizontally above a dining table.
One of my favorite things is keeping some of the existing elements and using them in new ways, Weil explained. This clock, weve had for several shows and weve moved it around in different settings and different positions.
Check out flea markets and garage sales for vintage finds at a bargain, and use them to accent your displays.
We have a city-wide garage sale in Austin every two months that we always go to, Weil noted.
Four Hands also avails itself of Habitat Restore, a sort of Goodwill Store for old building materials and architectural elements such as molding and trim. Weil indicated a wall display over a dining setting near one of the Vegas showrooms entrances.
We get these pieces of old house trim that we repurpose, she said. Well find whatever (Habitat Restore) has in a large quantity that we can get inspiration from to use in different ways.
String wall art is another easy, extremely flexible visual.
All you need is nails, a board and string, and you can create any pattern you want, Weil said. Just about anything can be re-used in different ways, repurposed to keep visual displays exciting and changing on a budget. HFB