Managing Small Retail Spaces

Retail spaces can get cramped for a number of reasons. You may have decided to expand and offer more products. Maybe you are offering an entire new department. You could just be running out of storage space. Or, you might have chosen a small space to have an affordable retail space in a good location. Whatever your reasons, you need a way to deal with the small space without sacrificing sales or image.

Not having much room means that you need to get creative. Creative displays are what make boutiques so popular today. Displays need to be effective and satisfy needs for the customers. For example, when a customer enters a store and approaches a display, they have many questions going through their heads. They are wondering if they like the product. They then consider what other people will think. They imagine how the garments would make them feel. Then they check out quality, price, and the availability of their size.

Setting up your displays with these customer questions in mind will help you to overcome some of the hurdles that retailers face. You can’t necessarily only put out a few sizes of each item, or customers will assume that you probably don’t have their size and they won’t go through the process. You don’t want everything to look like clearance. If there are fully stocked displays, then customers feel like they are getting something new and popular. If the inventory is low, they might assume that you are not restocking this item for some reason. It could be quality, popularity, or some other unknown that turns them off when they look at the display.

So, this leaves you with a predicament. You need to save space. You want to offer more and more products. But, you don’t want to put out skimpy amounts of each thing. Even more important, you don’t want your store to get crowded and look like a bargain bin. The solution is to utilize retail displays designed to conquer this particular problem.

The most popular and cost effective solution is to use slatwall panels. You can install slatwall in a store and take full advantage of vertical space. You can hang and display hundreds of items on the walls of your store or boutique, even in a small amount of square footage. This can leave the floor open to creating more attractive and elaborate displays.

Using slatwall not only saves space, but it makes your store easy to shop in. All of your items can face outward toward the customer. Customers can shop without touching anything. They can see what each item looks like and also see that your inventory is stocked. If something’s running low, you can simply switch out the bar for a shorter one to make your store look continuously stocked.

Using slatwall and slatwall panels in your store will make you and your customers happier.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the Vice President of S & L Store Fixtures, a leading online resource for retail displays, including mannequins, dress mannequin forms, female mannequins, slatwall and slatwall panels. For more information, please visit http://www.slstoredisplays.com.

Tips for Starting Up a Boutique

Many entrepreneurs are running their own businesses with little or no training. It seems that with a little research, many self-starters are seeing great success. Boutiques are a popular form of business to start. Most boutique owners aren’t simply looking to make some money, but have a drive and a passion to sell their unique offerings to the public. This is a good thing.

To be successful in a business, you must have desire. You have to care about what you’re doing and be willing to put in many thankless and fruitless hours of hard work. It takes stamina and determination. Do your research and you could be on your way to owning a successful boutique. Follow these tips to help you stay focused on your goal.

Try not to get swallowed up by mounds of paperwork and details swimming in your brain. Your initial goal is to get your “big picture” plans down in writing. This involves detailing what you want the store to look like. Write down the major categories of inventory that you want to offer. Add in what you want to be unique about your store. Define your competition and what you will do to be different. You really need to pinpoint a target audience. Decide who you will be marketing to, who you won’t be marketing to, and why.

Having these basic guidelines will help you to stay focused on your goals while you get other details squared away. Once you know what you want to sell, decide on your prices. You may have to visit other boutiques, check online stores, check auction sites, and make your decisions based on your competition.

Making your prices too low can make customers think that the products are of low quality. Try to stay in the range of pricing that you see when you research. If something is going to cost you too much and you aren’t going to see much profit from it, ditch it and move on to the next product. Remember that it’s not all about what you want to sell, but what the target market wants to purchase.

Once your inventory and pricing is squared away, you need to look at facilities. Choose a facility based on location, size, traffic opportunity, and price. You can afford a better location if you choose to go with a smaller space. Dealing with a small space is easy if you use the correct retail supplies and accessories. For example, you can use slatwall panels to turn small spaces into attractive displays. Slatwall is easy to install and helps you to make the most of the space that you have. Using slatwall in a boutique gives you lots of display options without breaking the bank.


About the Author: Ron Maier is the Vice President of S & L Store Fixtures, a leading online resource for retail displays, including mannequins, dress mannequin forms, female mannequins, slatwall and slatwall panels. For more information, please visit http://www.slstoredisplays.com.

Boutique Merchandising Tips

Merchandising in a small boutique can be challenging, especially if you’re new to the business. You want your boutique to look fresh and inviting while maintaining its unique charms. However, problems arise when you want to carry more inventory or expand on your merchandise. You need to accomplish both to be successful.

Carrying more products can help you to bring in more money. It can bring you customers that you didn’t appeal to before. It can keep your current customers interested and coming back time and again. Keeping your product line interesting and profitable is definitely a priority. Having the inventory on hand to satisfy your customers and hold up during promotions and busy seasons is also important. So what do you do if you want to turn more profit, gain new customers, and expand if you are in a limited space?

There are a few ways that you can accomplish this. You need to make space so that your sales floor isn’t overcrowded. Too many products in one area can make your boutique look crowded and uninviting. You won’t sell more simply by squeezing more in. You can invest in garment racks that stand taller to give you more room. This helps you to take advantage of vertical space. However, if racks stand too tall, it can make it difficult to keep an eye on your store when you suspect that someone is considering shoplifting.

Another way to take advantage of vertical space is on your walls. You can use gridwall or slatwall systems to display your items vertically without sacrificing attractiveness. There are many benefits to using gridwall and slatwall.

One is the manner in which they display your products. Instead of your shirts, coats, and dresses facing each other, they can hang facing outward. This type of visibility allows customers to shop with ease. They can easily see what you have to offer without digging through crowded clothing racks.

When you’re ready to add more inventory, the versatility of the grid wall or slat wall will amaze you. You can squeeze things closer together without making them look crowded. You can make unique spaces for new inventory with very little effort, simply by moving the hooks around.

You can also display your accessories right beside the outfits that you think they look best with. By displaying your items on the wall, you can free up floor space to display ensembles on mannequins. Mannequins are the number one selling tool in the retail industry and using gridwall and slatwall will allow you to take full advantage of them.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the Vice President of S & L Store Fixtures, a leading online resource for retail displays, including mannequins, dress mannequin forms, female mannequins, gridwall and slatwall store fixtures. For more information, please visit http://www.slstoredisplays.com.

Boutique Mannequins Used for Networking

Boutiques have a lot of creative freedom when it comes to creating a showcase in their store. Mannequins make wonderful additions to a unique boutique’s displays and can be used to encourage customers to participate in networking for your business. You can use them in so many ways that the possibilities are truly endless. Here are a few creative ideas for you to make the most of the showcase mannequins in your boutique while encouraging customers to network with you and other people on social web sites.

A showcase display that uses mannequins is more of an attention-grabbing focal point than just a way to show how clothing looks when it is worn. To showcase something, you need to consider location, lighting and other creative elements. Many stores and boutiques create this kind of display in their entrance or in their window displays. But, you can use them all over your store to grab attention and keep it. This can be useful for drawing customers into areas of the boutique that get less traffic.

One idea is to have mannequins lounging around the store wearing your merchandise. If you have the space, you can place couches, chairs, tables or other furniture in different areas. Position mannequins on the couches, as if they’re just hanging out there. You can have female mannequins on the phone or powdering their noses, sitting on the couch. People will stop and look in surprise because they will initially think that they are real people. This kind of positioning will get more attention than a mannequin simply standing in front of a garment rack!

Another couch idea is to have the mannequin sitting and smiling with one arm on the back of the couch. When you see customers laughing at the cheesy grin on the mannequin’s face, you can ask them if they would like for you to take their picture posing with the mannequin. You can get the e-mail addresses of the customers and send them the funny pictures with your logo on the photo. The customer will then, most likely, post the photos to social networking sites and give you good exposure and free advertising.

Another idea is to use your mannequins as decorations. Dress forms (or dress mannequins) are sometimes produced in a vintage style. These are a lot like human shaped cages. You can use them to display clothing, but you can also use them in more creative ways. You can stuff the hollow inside with flowers, colored paper, packing peanuts, whatever you think is interesting. We saw an idea at blisstree.com for using a dress mannequin as a place card holder at a dinner party. You could do something similar, encouraging your customers to place their business cards on the dress mannequin for a chance to win something.

Coming up with interesting ways to create a showcase or to network with your customers will keep them interested in coming back to your store. People want to be inspired when they shop in boutiques, so make sure that you do not disappoint!

About the Author: Ron Maier is the Vice President of S & L Store Fixtures, a leading online resource for retail displays, including mannequins mannequins, dress mannequin forms, female mannequins, gridwall and slatwall store fixtures. For more information, please visit http://www.slstoredisplays.com.

Rules of Window Display

A good window display should distract customers from whatever they are doing and grab their attention. It only takes a second to make a first impression. Dress up your window displays with these rules in mind and you could be attracting new customers and encouraging return visits before you know it.

1) Make a good first impression.

Your window display is your best chance at making a good first impression. Our instinct is to rely heavily on first impressions. When meeting people, it is hard not to judge a book by its cover. But, we shouldn’t because the person may be having a bad day or something of the sort. For shopping purposes, we do judge the book by the cover, and we should. If a retailer wants our business, they need to convey to us what they have to offer and why we should be interested.

2) Communicate your purpose.

Use your window displays to show the customers why they should enter your store. Make sure that you target your audience, not only to get the shoppers that will spend money into your store, but also to show potential customers what style of clothing you sell and for what price.

3) Allude to pricing in your window display.

Giving cues to your audience about price is very important. If your clothing is very expensive or high end, then your window display should communicate that. This helps people to determine if they should go in or not. Attracting the wrong customers will have them coming in, turning their noses up, rummaging through everything, and then spreading the word to their friends that you are overpriced. Specifically targeting those that are looking for items in your pricing range will help build a quality customer base that only spreads good word-of-mouth advertising for you.

4) Give a good sampling of what your store offers.

Don’t just show your latest and greatest. Showing off what’s new is a great idea, but make sure that you don’t limit yourself to just that. Accessories can account for a huge percentage of your profits. Plus, many shoppers are not looking to spend a lot, but they might want to check out your purses, jewelry, hats or sunglasses. Use these items to draw in more customers.

5) Make people see how they want to feel.

People buy clothing and accessories not only to clothe themselves, but also to send out a message or feel a certain way. Pay attention to how your customers feel when they purchase your clothing. Do they feel elegant, hip, relaxed, friendly, edgy or sexy? Portray the feeling that people are after in your window display. The best way to have people associate feelings with purchasing your clothing is to utilize mannequins. Be creative and make sure that people are seeing something that makes them want to feel the same as the mannequin in your showcase.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the Vice President of S & L Store Fixtures, a leading online resource for retail display cases including mannequins, mannequin forms, gridwall and slatwall store fixtures. For more information, please visit http://www.slstoredisplays.com.