Archive for the ‘Tips’ Category

Maximizing Floor Space

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

Maximizing Floor Space

A customer recently sent in an inquiry to the blog. She asked about display options for her pet clothing and accessories products. I answered her question and it got me thinking about different ways to maximize floor space. With important shopping days upon us, it is never too late to take advantage of display pieces that can help you make the most of the products you want to display with as little set up time and floor space use as possible. I’m going to give you three options and I’m sure you will love one or maybe even all three of them!

Option #1

Wire Grid Displays

Wire Grid Displays come in a variety of different options. We offer triangle grid towers, 4way grid towers and gondola units. All of these options come with a few standard features:

Easy Assembly
Separate Base with casters
Wire Grid Panels (5 or 6’ height)
Wire Grid Connectors
At least 3 different finishes

All of these units take up limited space on a sales floor or craft show booth making them a great option for space saving. The triangle and 4way grid towers assemble into display pieces that rotate 360 degrees. Merchandise can be seen from all sides of these displays. All sorts of merchandise work well on these displays. You can add shelving, hangrail, peghooks, faceouts and wire baskets to these units to make them great workhorse units that will address all sorts of display challenges. These are great for all types clothing, home fragrance, books, toys anything you can imagine. All of the display options require less than 10 square feet of floor space!

Option #2 Wood Displays

Wood Displays are display units that pack a wonderful design punch! These are a great option for displaying light to medium weight merchandise. These are especially great for people who want to flex their creativity. These displayers come with the following standard features

Ready to Finish Wood Components
Takes Latex Paint or Wood Stain Well
Lightweight Pine
Fast Assembly

All of the wood display units have brass hinges that attach the main framing components together. All that is required of you is add shelving and/or support rods to finish the look! In just a few short minutes, you will be ready to use your wood display units. Add our pegboard accessories to attach your merchandise on the pegboard display units. All of the wood displays can be used indoors or out. With a little imagination, these units can be customized to fit any type of décor or style.

Option #3 Single and Double Rail Folding Rolling Rack

The Folding Rolling Rack is one of the most compact and easy to use racks available on the market today. These racks can be assembled and ready to use in less than 5 minutes. They collapse down to 4” in height to allow them to be stored under a bed or transported easily into a car. They are great for displaying clothing on sales floors and they each have a weight capacity of 150 lbs and 200 lbs respectively. They can hold up to 144 pieces of clothing! That’s a lot of merchandise. These racks take up less than 10 square feet of floor space.

Make sure you continue to check in with us as we continue to bring you the best information concerning retail news and practical advice that will serve you well in your store. Drop us a line on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest information.

Posted in Featured Products, Merchandising, Tips | No Comments »

Some Brief Thoughts & Retail Help from Retail Rich

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Some Brief Thoughts & Retail Help from Retail Rich

By Rich Gordon AKA Retail Rich

How Many Ideas For Growing Or Improving Your Business Have You Dismissed This Year, because your certain they won’t work or you know better? How many ideas have you dismissed mostly because they came from an employee or some crazy customer. Some of the wildest craziest ideas are the ones that have some real potential.

No faith, no creativity, no experimentation equals failure! The fact is that the success of any new concept is at the mercy of many different variables. It may be timing. It may be design, promotion, the economy, location, or just the luck of the draw at the moment. Sometimes even the slightest adjustments can make the difference between dismal failure and overwhelming success. “Failure is success turned inside-out.” (from the poem, “Don’t quit”) Fear or discomfort seems to motivate many of us to be willing to give up something valuable in order to rid ourselves of something painful or unwanted. It’s a bit like, “Throwing out the baby with the bathwater” when things don’t work, and it’s shortsighted.

Unless you’re just overflowing with some real genius new ideas for sales, don’t be so quick to dismiss them without turning them upside down or inside out and looking at them from different perspectives. Are you taking the time and the thought to really move your business forward? Think about it honestly.

Making lists of why something can’t be done

is minimum wage work.

BEFORE YOU SPEAK… LISTEN

BEFORE YOU WRITE… THINK

BEFORE YOU SPEND… EARN

BEFORE YOU CRITICIZE…WAIT

BEFORE YOU PRAY…FORGIVE

BEFORE YOU QUIT…TRY

Are You The Place To Go For The Latest Products On The Market, or does your store remain a bit stale and predictable? Change is a must. Are you seen as a bit behind in what’s going on out there? Your goal should be to give customers continuing and persuasive reasons to revisit your store. There is no room for another ordinary retailer.

A Few Thoughts To Ponder

Even at a Mensa convention, someone is the dumbest person in the room.

What disease did cured ham actually have?

If corn oil is made from corn, and vegetable oil is made from vegetables, what is baby oil made from?

The Customer Experience Comes Only From You

Customer experience is what customers walk out of your store with that is your part of the whole business transaction. The product came from a manufacturer. The experience came from YOUR store and it in effect, is a story. It’s the story your customers tell their friends and relatives about the most wonderful, warm, or “over the top” experience they had while in your store with YOUR people. You have absolutely no control over what they say or how they tell the story. The experience is what they saw, heard and felt from their perspective, and that belongs to them. What YOU can do in your store is deliver the experience and the connection that makes the customer rave about you, and it’s what can make them a customer advocate for your business. Their experience in your store is your brand. It’s not what you envision or planned.

In Marketing, When Writing An Ad, A Newsletter, Or A Blog, you don’t ever want potential customers to read or listen to your ad and think, “Hurry up and get to the point.” Instead, keep your messages short, sweet and succinct, and your results will improve.

Make the mundane memorable!

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Is Your Store Trying Your Customer’s Patience?

Thursday, September 8th, 2011

Is Your Store Trying Your Customer’s Patience?

(10 Very Basic Details If You’re Going to Give Customers a Decent Experience In Your Store)

By Rich Gordon aka Retail Rich

Every business screws up. Deliveries are late. Shipments are wrong. Someone misunderstands the customer. And in retailing, employees and shop owners test their customers patience . . .way too often!

It’s hard enough to get customers in your store these days, so why allow the little things add up to big things with customers as they make their rounds. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every month to get the customer excited or in the right frame of mind to buy a particular brand or product. If they have chosen your store to make that purchase in, that’s even better. So why should the slightest sign of frustration or irritation be placed on the customer, once they have made it into YOUR store?

I know retailers don’t necessarily mean to try the patience of their customers on purpose. Many of us out there have even convinced ourselves that customers don’t want good service. We just slowly but surely drop the ball with customers who walk in our store. We get busy. We get stressed and we make assumptions about customers based on our considerable experience, and before long our service is mediocre at best. Some of our bad habits and assumptions have become so ingrained in our daily activities we don’t even recognize them as problems anymore. Or maybe we feel like we have too many more important problems.

And then we carry on and worry about what the on-line retailers are doing to us. You need to ask yourself; if the things you do or don’t do in your store are part of the contributing factors that make customers want to sit home and order from their computer.

1. Conversations and complaint sessions at the checkout counter. Sales clerks, grocery clerks and their baggers who want to hold an entire conversation or complaint session with each other while they are checking “your” customers out. There is nothing professional about it and there is nothing polite about talking around or through the customers. They should not feel like they are listening in or intruding on a personal conversation. Customers don’t need to hear about Sally’s break-up with Brad, or grandma’s recuperation.

2. Some customers don’t need your help, but you can’t assume anything. Keep in mind that many customers have done their homework and know what they want. Your job is to determine how much help they want. If customers seem to know what they want and act a bit hurried, don’t run through every step of the sales process or the employee sales manual. Respect your customer’s time and help them get out as fast as they wish.

3. Employee huddles. Customers should not have to walk up to your people and feel like they are interrupting a conversation. If the employees suddenly go silent as the customer approaches and the employees both turn to the customer and stare, it’s just as bad. The customer should not feel like they are killing the party! They need to offer an apology such as “excuse us. What can we do for you.?”

4. Telling your employees what they should do or say to customers is not enough! You may have told your employees to say “Thank You.” If you have, give yourself one point. But if you have employees with poor attitudes or lame interpersonal skills, do you really think it’s still OK for them to give your customers one of those worthless rather forced and fake “thank you’s”? If your people can’t even act as though they appreciate your customers business, then maybe they should look at janitorial work, or work at a government job like being a postal counter worker. Leave the “people-skills” work for someone who can manufacture a sincere smile and “thank you”.

5. Hiring warm bodies isn’t near enough! If you are hiring teenagers whose parents have made them get a job and they don’t want to be in your store, or they have some kind of attitude, stop this practice immediately. Find someone else, or you may even be better off closed.

6. Conversations off the clock—still no good! If you have employees who have clocked out for whatever reason, they should not be allowed to stand around and carry on conversations with employees while customers are around and ignored. If they want to chat with their co-worker buddies, do it while the store is empty or go in the back room.

7. Customer and Phone Call Etiquette No employee should ever be talking to ANYONE on the phone while they are taking a customers money or credit card payment. The customer should have 100% of his or her attention and anyone on the phone should be put on hold. If it’s a friend on the phone, the phone should be hung up. Customers should not be made to feel like they are interrupting anything.

If your customers come up to approach your counter to ask your people for help and the phone rings as you have begun to talk, the phone caller DOES NOT come first. The caller did not take the time and trouble to come to your store. The customer in the store has dibbs. Excuse yourself and apologetically tell the customer you will need to call them back right away after taking their phone number.

8. Stop making the same scheduling mistakes, if you really care! Take careful notes as to when your peak times of day happen or if your store has a rush after school or during rush hour. Write your schedules to handle these times. Scheduling too few employees to handle a rush. You not only run the risk of losing all the sales you don’t make, you also irritate or aggravate some customers who may find it less and less necessary to come by.

9. Insure your people know how to give back change correctly and they are actually doing it! Do NOT allow your people to give change without counting it back correctly. If they don’t know how to correctly make change—train them. Do not allow any transaction to take place of any kind without some words being spoken to the customer. After some kind words or a question such as what else can I do for you, if your employees can’t look at the customer straight in the eye and sincerely thank them for their business—get rid of them.

10. Being attentive to any customer who is in your store doesn’t mean you have to be right there. What kinds of attention and back flips do your customers have to go through to get your peoples attention in your store? It is the people on your staff who should determine when a customer might need help. It is not the job of the customer to come find your people and flag them down. If the customer has had to wait or take action to get your peoples attention, then the employee should apologize for the inattention.

If your customers are leaving your store in frustration or without a smile on their face from some kind of pleasant interaction with your people, you need to do some more work in your store with your people. Customers should not feel worse or be more stressed as a result of shopping in your brick and mortar store.

Customers are out there right now buying and looking for the very products and services offered in your store. These people have the money for the products and services you offer. Their wallets have not been locked shut. Some of them may be looking for a bargain, but they are ready to buy. Almost all of them are looking for some human connection. They are all looking for something to excite them and they are all looking for something they simply must have now. Yes, Apple sells products that people didn’t even know they wanted, but odds are your store does not. That’s OK. That’s why your store needs to be interesting, fresh, clean and extremely friendly and helpful. If you can’t do this, it’s going to be a heck of a lot tougher!

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What is a Good Retail Salesperson?

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

What is a Good Retail Salesperson?

by Rich Gordon AKA Retail Rich

Do you have sales-clerks OR Do you have sales-people in your store?

Lets talk first about sales clerks. In my mind, they are there to do the normal day-to-day work in a retail establishment, which involves cleaning, putting out merchandise, ticketing it and ringing it up. This is NOT a salesperson. You most likely need salesclerks, but in this day and age, AND ECONOMY, you need them to be salespeople too! If you just have employees who are waiting for someone to buy something, then you have order-takers and they should be called order-takers. . . or maybe sales-clerks, but they ARE NOT salespeople and the real question is which do you have on your payroll? You need to understand just whom you have in your store!

A good salesperson caters to the store’s customers and works to help them in anyway possible. They don’t ignore the customer or find a reason to avoid them, or keep them waiting while they finish up a phone call to their boyfriend. They really do understand the importance of SERVING customers. They don’t consider it demeaning and they don’t considerate it an interruption to their daily tasks, of which taking care of customers is the most important.

A good salesperson does not stumble they’re way through a question that a customer asks about a given product, just because they are ignorant of product knowledge. Have you ever gone into a store and asked about a product, only to have the salesperson read off the product package, as if he’s providing you a valuable service? A good salesperson needs to know about the things he or she is selling. Customers are likely to see through the ignorance and walk away. As a result, your store loses their trust, perhaps permanently. As a retailer, product knowledge is important depending on what you are selling.

A good salesperson strives to greet every customer by name whenever possible. They are friendly and willing to listen. In fact they enjoy talking to people.

A good salesperson looks professional—like they belong in your store. They do not look like they are working a garage sale. A professional appearance is CRITICAL to your store’s image and brand. If you think about it, appearance does matter. Whether it’s the packaging on a product you purchase, or your company’s web site, people notice how things look. Whether you like it or not people care about how things look and make judgments about you and your store based on appearance. Looking the part, makes it easier for your customers to see who can help them, and it identifies them as the people within the store that they can count on to help. If you tell me that Walmart doesn’t have professional looking people, you’re right. They don’t. But you don’t have the lowest prices in town and you don’t cater to the lowest common denominator of customer’s. . . At least I hope not!

A good salesperson looks at each customer as having a “need” or “want”. A good salesperson wants to help discover just what that is, and believes if they can do so, the customer has the potential of buying multiple items.

A good salesperson helps the store’s management collect buyer preferences and information on each customer they work with, because they know that the more information the store has about them, the easier it will be to please the customer in the long run.

A good salesperson asks the customer if there is anything else they can help them with, and if the customer has found everything they came in for.

A good salesperson thanks the customer for their visit, and/or purchase. At Nordstrom’s, a good salesperson will walk around the sales-counter after the transaction has been completed and hands the purchase to the customer while thanking them for their business.

A good salesperson calls customers at times (after the sale) to insure they were happy with their purchase and satisfied with their visit to the store.

Selling is a service. A Salesperson is not there to push something on the customer they don’t want. A good salesperson is there to build trust and help the customer satisfy a want or a need with the knowledge they have about the products and the store. None of us want to be sold something. We all do want to be serviced.

If you do NOT have salespeople on your staff, it most likely is not the fault of your employees. You are the one who needs to make some changes. You hired them. If they don’t have the right personality for sales, whose fault is that? If they have been working for you for a while and you see them doing none of the above very well, they most likely need some training and some explanation of YOUR priorities where customers are concerned. Changes in staff behavior do not occur automatically or overnight, so you will need to be persistent and consistent. As you try to make changes, give your people a sense of why you’re doing the things your doing and some idea of what lies ahead. When employees have a boss who surprises or direction suddenly without warning, they get a bit nervous. People do like predictability and on what basis they’re being judged. If any of these issues sound like they have you and your store in their sights, I’m sorry, but YOU have some work to do!

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A Tale of Three Stores

Thursday, July 14th, 2011

A Tale of Three Stores

by Rich Gordon aka Retail Rich

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Charles Dickens was right, especially if he were referring to some retailers out there today.

I’ve been visiting a lot of stores lately, especially in Hawaii, St. Louis and the Washington D.C. area. And I’m here to tell you that there are plenty of retailers in all three cities who don’t belong in business. But this isn’t what I love to find. Finding poor retailers just makes me feel sad, and it makes me wonder how many people visit these stores only to think to themselves’, “no wonder I love buying on the internet”. The fact is, I love it when I find a really good retailer that actually “gets it” and it impresses the heck out of me.

I’ve decided as I’ve visited these stores that there is no way my wife or I will buy anything from any store that can’t acknowledge and make me feel sincerely welcomed in their store. They don’t know that I write a blog and that I have a broad retail background. All they know is that I’m a person who may be a potential customer within their store.

The first shop I entered in the Annapolis, Maryland area one Saturday failed right off the bat. I had to move out of the way of an employee who was hastily making a beeline for the backroom. No excuse me, good morning or even drop dead. Just an attitude of, “your in my way” as the employee moved from behind the counter. Judging from the age of this person, they were most likely an employee. It made me wonder just what the owner feels when their investment, their livelihood, in some cases their very identity is at the mercy of such a poor excuse for help, even if only for a day! By the way, this person never did say “hello” and they seemed distracted enough, I felt like I should be looking for the self-service checkout line. As I left, I heard a rather insincere shout out, from the clerk, “thanks”. I thought, thanks. . . For what? Thanks for not bothering me? If you couldn’t say anything to me the entire time I was in your store, why say thanks now that I was walking out the door? Then it hit me. . . The young indifferent girl was thanking me for leaving and not bothering her anymore. She might have had to ring me up or answer a question or something!

I got to thinking, what if the owner of this store had just invested in some new mobile messaging technology and I had been texted to entice me into the store? Could the owner be wondering why they weren’t getting a better response from their investment. Let me tell you. . .technology won’t solve this kind of problem!

The next store I entered had an older gentleman manning the front counter area. There was so much merchandise and general junk around the counter, the walls and the floor, that it appeared he had built a small fortress around himself so no customer could see him. What was he doing back there? Eating, sleeping, playing solitaire? No one could tell! Maybe he just wanted customers to feel more hesitant about peeking through the fortress and bugging him.

There were ceiling tiles missing and some of the ones that were there were stained from roof leaks in the past. I realized no one wants to pay for stained sales tiles and a store are usually at the mercy of the landlord. How about just painting them white again? It’s not a big deal! The floors weren’t much better looking, but the merchandise was packed on the shelves and the prices were full boat. I asked myself, why should I pay full price in this place for anything. When I couldn’t up with an answer, so I left.

My next store visit was a total accident. It was an affordable jewelry/gift shop. We weren’t in the market for either, but through the window it looked bright, interesting, clean and spacious and my curiosity got the best of me. Boy, was I glad I went in. My wallet wouldn’t necessarily agree, as it was lightened by a few hundred dollars over the next half hour.

Upon walking in, my wife and I were greeted immediately even though the store’s single salesclerk happened to be leaning over a jewelry counter talking to another customer. He enthusiastically told us, he would be with us as soon as possible.

After taking care of the other customer, the salesclerk engaged us in conversation, while being interrupted a couple of times by a phone caller. In both cases, the salesclerk excused himself and answered the phone, only to tell the caller he would need to take their name and number and call them back as soon as possible. This clerk understood that the person who has actually taken the time and trouble to go to your store comes first and foremost.. . . Hallelujah!

The amazing thing about this person was that after engaging us in conversation, he asked my wife if she was familiar with a particular new line of jewelry he had started to carry. He enthusiastically led her and I over to an attractive well-lighted counter. The jewelry involved silver and a variety of interchangeable precious and semi-precious stones. He explained the line as well as the catalogue and how the pricing worked. He provided just the right balance of creating interest, product information, genuine friendliness and helpfulness. He wasn’t pushy, but positive. He sensed when we wanted to be left alone to look and consider our possible purchase. He provided an incentive to purchase more, but provided the offer as information as opposed to some hard selling tactic.

In the end, my wife was happy and the store had a few hundred additional sales dollars added to the till. The clerk explained the warranty to us once again, as well as how to access any help. He handed us his business card and told us about the company website while capturing our contact information. He gave us a couple of care tips, while giving my wife a free polishing cloth. He thanked us for the business and recommended a good place to go eat lunch.

Good customer service starts with acknowledging there is a person in your store, not ignoring them or hoping they won’t bother you. Most owners know this, but they often have no clue as to what their people are really doing. Some owners understand the importance of customers, but still take them for granted, or they assume that if the customer wants something they’ll get the clerk or the storeowner. They deserve your respect and attention, especially over that of a phone caller. Everyone would do well to remember that customers are people who deserve your respect until they give you reason to think otherwise. They are people who have gone to the expense to drive, walk or both to your place of business and give you a shot at some of their hard earned money. They are physically at your place of business and you have invited them in by the mere fact that you are in business. If you don’t treat these people with basic respect and can’t talk to them and truly serve them, they will probably continue to shop, but possibly elsewhere. Maybe they’ll shop online, only you’ll never know what they did or how much they spent. They may spend less online or they might not, but you didn’t give them any reason to buy from you, not even “friendliness.”

This is the way it’s supposed to be. Which tale is your store closer to?

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	Rack Display Options
	Wall Display Configurations (Slatwall and Wire Grid)
	Window Displays
	Clothing Displays
	Maximizing Merchandise in Display Cases