Retail Design and construction experts agree: Most retailers lack the ability to stand out from their peers.

Thousands of furniture retailers still sell product on open floors with minimal display. Many attempt to vignette their stores with sheet-rock walls and display partitions. At best, the industry has packaged gallery programs that have improved the display level for independent retailers. But a manufacturer’s gallery is still a mass merchandised design, and to people shopping for home furnishings, they begin to look alike. It’s little wonder the industry has resorted to self defeating, price driven promotions to keep warm bodies in the stores.

The word unique cannot be associated enough with the word success! When experts bemoan retailers’ ability to stand out, they say that too few operations take time to create an identity that will do three critical things:

1. Excite and enthuse customers.
2. Make the shopping experience fun and memorable.
3. Imply incredibly high perceived value to all products for sale.

In order to capture shoppers’ interest, retailers need to find unique ways to burn the image of their stores into customers’ minds. While great sales people and product are most important, something like a fun, dramatic display can be the single factor that sets a successful store apart from other stores.

Too many merchants look only to their own industry for display ideas. A trip to the local mall is definitely in order to start creative juices flowing. Furniture retailers need to borrow department store display techniques to gain an edge in customers’ memories. Does this mean you need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on your store? While as a store planner I’d like to see nothing better, that’s simply not practical.

The truth about most successful stores is: imagination and good planning are as important as the actual amount of money you spend.

Anyone can design a fantastic store with an unlimited budget. While it’s critical to be realistic about budgets when planning projects, it’s equally important to squeeze as much as you can out of every dollar. This means taking time to comparison shop, knowing techniques to cut corners without sacrificing the look, and most importantly, knowing where to spend inside the store to get the biggest bang for the buck.

Use these basic truths to align your buying and product presentation, then watch sales increase:
1. When emotion enters the buying equation, display and good product presentation are critical.
2. Most people don’t have the ability to put a room together. They need creative ideas.
3. Retailers don’t devote enough time to selecting the right accessories. Many also don’t have talented display people on staff.
4. The better the presentation, the higher the perceived value of what you sell.
5. Emotional purchasers seldom give the price tag a second look.

If you buy the most exciting products you can find, put them in creative displays, and have a well educated, people oriented sales force, you’ve found the winning combination. The whole town will be talking about and shopping in your store.

Lou Kief is a partner in the Kief-Walls Group, a store planning, retail consulting, and business design firm based in California. The company specializes in the interior and exterior design of retail stores and manufacturer’s showrooms across the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean. Consulting and contract buying services are also available for retailers of all sizes. For more information, call Lou at (800) 316-9032.