Design a Buying Space

“To avoid creating a claustrophobic vibe, limit tall shelving to exterior walls and use lower-profile displays around the middle.”

— Tim Matey, F.C. Dadson, Inc.

“You want your traffic paths to flow like a stream, with natural curves as opposed to sharp turns in the aisles.”

—Tabitha Miller, certified Feng Shui consultant

“Natural movement translates to a comfortable shopping experience. A comfortable shopping experience produces a popular store.”

Your toy store may be filled with child-friendly murals and even an open play area, but if customers walk out empty-handed, the store’s design is not doing its job. Nearly all of the owners who spoke with TDmonthly agreed that a successful design encourages customers to come back and buy again.

So, how do you create a space that inspires children to play and parents to purchase?

Lack of parking can smash a business if you’re not creative. Parking crunches in his 33-space lot during Christmas forced Powell Phillips “to get them in and out as soon as possible.” To speed up transaction times, the more than half-century-old Phillips Toy Mart in Nashville forgoes its normal free gift-wrapping service.

During street festivals, the parking lot can even become an extension of the store. When Ariel’s Child in New Windsor, N.Y., turned 20, former owner Ricki Block held relays, games and musical events in her lot (Fig 2.1)

Sidewalk Displays

On the Park in Kingswood, Texas announces its presence on the street by placing a giant toy soldier on either side of its entrance (Fig. 2.2).

If you’ve wrapped your car [see Chapter 1], as the Gurleys did at their two Lollipop Shops in S.C., you can park an extra eye-catching ad right in front of your store (Fig. 2.3).

Store windows should be clean, lighted well and speak to the customer in five to seven seconds, so “less is more,” advised Donna Geary, founder and executive director of Impact Visual Merchandising and author of “Maximizing Store Impact: A Retailer's Guide to Profitable Visual Merchandising.”  

Here are more tips from Geary and toy-store owners:

1. Use lights that minimize reflections.
2.  Put window lighting on a separate circuit or breaker and leave it on 24/7 to entice nighttime passersby to return.
3. Set up an expectation in the window, and then fulfill it in the store. When customers enter Red Wagon Toy Co. (Fig. 2.4) in Woodstock, Vt., they see garlands adorned with the same little red wagons that grace a tree in the store window, Owner Kim Smith told TDmonthly.
4. Keeping large stuffed animals in the window “brings [customers] into the store to touch or buy them. If they are not in the window, we usually do not sell many,” noted Joshua Grindstaff of Education Station in Coldwater, Mich.
5. Whatever is on display in the window should be easy to find inside.
6. Tie into your town’s or world events. Nicole Fletcher, owner of Let the Games Begin in downtown Maple Ridge, BC, said her store’s best display correlated with a local Caribbean festival.
7. Change your display as often as customers return. When TDmonthly polled 30 toy-store owners, 79 percent changed their window displays at least monthly and 10 percent did it weekly.
8. For the January sale at Red Wagon Toy Co., “I buy four Douglas large penguins, big stick-on letters from Staples in red, spell out “SALE” on their tummies and add some Styrofoam snowballs and blue icy fabric,” said Smith.

MAKE YOUR STORE BUYER-FRIENDLY

Though you may want to cram your store full of wonderful products and ingenius displays, Tom Moseman,of Envirosell, Inc., (www.envirosell.com) — a company that videotapes shoppers to see what they buy or avoid and why — said customers want to be able to find a product quickly and be on their way.

How can you help them get in and out comfortably and still let them see as many toys and games as possible?

“Given the opportunity, people will move right when they enter a store,” said Philip Mitchell, founder of Discovery-Based Retail, a research, design and training company. He cited research by several groups, including Paco Underhill’s Envirosell. “If people naturally move that direction, lets encourage them to move that direction.”

Mitchell suggests creating “cascading aisles” in the store and designing feature lighting to encourage that movement (Fig. 2.5 – Toy Store Layout).

“Stores should be spacious,” insisted Fred Rosenberg of Toys and Candy on the Park in Kingswood, Texas. “They should have wide aisles for wheelchairs and double-wide strollers.”

“According to the Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines, all permanent displays need to be located on an accessible route that is at least 36” wide,” Tim Matey, retail consultant for F.C. Dadson, Inc.,  told TDmonthly. 

 “A clever trick that can also help strollers get around a store is to use rounded displays. Rounded corners create a path for wheeled objects to follow smoothly,” suggested Matey.

Tabitha Miller, a classically trained certified Feng Shui consultant, agreed: “You want your traffic paths to flow like a stream, with natural curves as opposed to sharp turns in the aisles.”

Pointed or angled structures imply a source of negative energy, she said. “In a store these sharp corners can come from shelving units, tables and even architectural corners. These can be softened or blocked by the use of plants, fabric and lights.”

Mitchell also likened the movement of customers to the flow of water.

“Look at Fig. 2.5 and imagine the store to be a tub of water,” he said. “If I were to run my arm around the outside edge of that tub I would start flow of the water it contained, and then inertia would take over and that movement would likely continue. Remember the invariant right and observe how I have reinforced the counter-clockwise flow of people with feature lighting, cascading aisles and overall design.”

Vary Shelf Height

“To avoid creating a claustrophobic vibe,” continued Matey, “limit tall shelving to exterior walls and use lower-profile displays around the middle.”

Older women prefer to reach items directly in front of them or a little higher, said Moseman, while older men (and kids) are more likely to bend down.

“If you are a store that caters to smaller children, having lower-profile shelving makes sense,” agreed Matey.

Maximum shelf height against walls and at the rear of the store should be 7’ to 8’, said Ted Baylis of Franklin Fixtures, a fixture company that works with small specialty retailers.  (see Fig.2.6).

“If they can’t see it, they won’t buy it,” he warned. For toy stores, center shelving should not be more than 5’ and is ideally shorter in front so kids can easily look over the first displays to the toys behind them.

“Imagine walking down the front aisle,” continued Mitchell (see Fig. 2.5). “Observe the black pointers and see the wide range of products that you would be exposed to. The staggered terminal points of the gondola not only guide traffic, but expose shoppers to wide variety. The exposure continues to pull traffic and only encourages the natural movement of the customers. Natural movement translates to a comfortable shopping experience. A comfortable shopping experience produces a popular store.”

“You want to build height from the front to the back,” advised Baylis. “You also want aisles oriented so people can easily look down the aisles.” (Fig. 2.7)

Baylis claimed that his customers report sales increases of from 10% to 40% after a fixture redesign. “Some of it is excitement generated by new paint and carpet,” he admitted, “but of it is from using fixtures that display the product well.”

Position Cash Wrap Strategically

“Impulse items always do well near check outs but make sure that you keep enough room to accommodate a line,” reminded Matey.

“Some general guidelines would be not to place the cash register too close to the door or in line with the door,” advised Miller. “This is like having your money coming and going without it having the chance to accumulate.”

Mitchell agreed in principle, but gave other reasons. Locating the cashwrap directly in front of the entrance or to the right would impede customers’ natural inclination to move rightward, he said.

“Therefore, I would avoid locating the cashwrap in either of those two positions,” he advised TDmonthly. “I designed this floor plan with the cash wrap near the end of the counter-clockwise circumscription of the sales space to encourage shoppers to peruse the entire sales floor. However, if security is a high concern in the store’s locale an alternate location could be the area that I designated with the blue rectangle.” (See Fig. 2.5)

One of the stores Baylis worked with positioned the cash wrap in the back, from where the entire store is easily visible (Fig. 2.8).

Too often, concluded Moseman, “store design fails the retailer." Your layout must recoup in sales the money invested in design … yet another reason to aim for simplicity.

Baylis agrees that clutter turns off customers, as does untidiness.

 “Go look at your store as if you're the customer,” he advised. “Are there sticky notes  and handwritten signs on door? Sticky notes on the register?  Dustballs on the shelves? If so, get rid of them. People like to see what they want to buy, and they want it to be appealing.” (Fig. 2.9)

DISPLAYS MOVE PRODUCT

Displays shouldn’t just attract the eye, they should encourage shoppers to buy more. Pam Mikula, owner of the online The Nature Store told TDmonthly, “Special groupings draw attention in a way that focuses the buying. One thing leads to buying another.”

“It’s about grouping items with a theme,” explained Dan Soderberg, an education and exhibit expert at the MarylandScienceCenter. “We have a NASA tie-in, so we group model rockets, lunar landers, Mars rovers together, making little dioramas of various outer-space scenes. The kids get excited, rush over to play with them and want them for their own.”

Use Manufacturers

Manufacturers can simplify selling for you by showing you how to display their items to maximize the number of purchases made in one visit. Corolle Dolls, for example, color-codes its dolls, clothing and accessories so shoppers can easily match their new baby doll to the correctly sized dresses, jumpers and baby carriers (Fig. 2.10).

“We find that when people use the merchandise and display items we give them, their sales go up dramatically,” said Corolle’s North American Director, Beau James. “We’re testing a servicing program right now where we’ll go into stores to help them use these materials effectively.”

For the Zoobies transmutable pets, “We recommend you set them out in all three stages: plush animal, pillow and blanket,” said Hailey Alston of Zoobies (Fig. 2.11).

This same principle could be applied to any toy that might otherwise require demonstration. If a toy isn’t moving, contact its maker for merchandising ideas.

“A really popular trend in retail right now is to create merchandising groups of complementary items to promote cross-selling,” said Matey.

A choice often cited by toy-store owners, for example, is to mix plush with books in one display. Folkmanis even includes on their website a list of books that can be paired with their animal puppets (www.folkmanis.com/booklist.htm). Other examples might include pairing costumes with books or playhouses. You could also add impulse items to higher-ticket displays, to encourage add-on purchases. (see Sidebar 2.1 How to Create Displays That Sell)

 Susan Miller, operations manager for The Santa Claus House in North Pole, Alaska, which her husband’s parents founded in 1952, is an expert on Christmas and the creation of tasteful store displays.

Miller recommends following these eight rules:

1.      Keep your theme consistent and complementary, whether woodsy, whimsical, or contemporary.

2.      Then add an element of surprise by including a splash of color or an item that does not seem at first to belong, yet still is in keeping with the theme.

3. Coordinate colors, ribbons, lights, and other display items.

5. Use all the space in a display from floor to ceiling.

6. Everything should be touchable and able to be purchased easily. Have the items in the display on nearby shelves and include “Please ask staff for assistance” cards near the displays themselves.

7. Keep adequate space for customer traffic around the display.

8. Rather than investing in display pieces, incorporate merchandise that will return dollars.

“Although conventional wisdom states that neutral backgrounds are best for display areas, conventional wisdom is not always wise,” says Lee Eiseman, leading color consultant, author and speaker for business in her book “Color: Messages and Meanings.” “Don’t underestimate the impact of darker or more vibrant color as background to make the merchandise ‘pop’.  And the space doesn’t have to be large to have a visual impact.  Even the smallest area will benefit from colorful backgrounds as they will always draw the customer’s eye.”

Try Feng Shui

Miller, a feng shui expert, states that “Every area has its own energy type, categorized by the five elements. So for example, if you have an area in the north section of your store, the watery colors and metallic colors would work best there.” (see Figure 2.12 Bagua Map)

Miller went on to suggest adding pool and swimming toys to that area, to reflect the water element.

 “The Life Aspiration associated with the North is career so another good option here would be toys associated with careers,” she continued. “This can be done in many places throughout the store. The East is wood and the aspiration associated is family, so the colors in this area can be wood colors such as green and the toys can be family themed toys, like cooking toys, dress up and playhouses.”

ACTION BUILDS EXCITEMENT

One easy way to stop shoppers in their tracks — outside or in — is to attract their eyes with motion. Owner Michael Dark of Something Different USA in England couples bold colors with minimal product display. One Christmas, “I had a window full of Afro-American Santas and choir singers and on another occasion a singing/moving cowboy Santa. It gets people to cross the street!” he said.

Anything moving will capture attention, Geary confirmed. The sense of motion and activity should continue inside the store. Astute retailers have begun placing monitors throughout their stores to play toy demonstration videos that highlight products that might otherwise collect dust. You can also use demonstration videos on your website to help excite interest in toys to facilitate ordering or even a vist to your brick-and-mortar store. [see Sidebar 2.2: Getting Great Toy Videos for Your Store or Website]

Sidebar 2.2: Getting Great Toy Videos for Your Store and Website

1. Approach manufacturers for looped DVDs of action toys that you can play on monitors throughout the stores.
2. Link to TDmonthly.com from your website and use the 1,100+ videos we’ve shot at trade shows and inhouse. Just follow these easy steps:
1. First, paste this link into your browser:

2. Use the “SEARCH” features to find videos of the products you carry.
   Each product will have HTML coding that can be used to add the video to your site. Once added, the video will appear as a link reading "Watch Video." When the link is clicked, a popup window will appear and begin streaming the product demonstration.
3. If you have any difficulty with these links, please contact us at [email protected]
2. Hold a Demonstration event at your store, videotape kids playing with your toys, and put the results on your website or run it on a loop in your store.
   
   
   

Other ways of keeping excitement high in the store are running a train on a track or keeping a supply of Plasmacars (Fig. 2.13)and other ride-ons out for customers and staff alike. Terri Bracken, owner of Earth Explorer Toys in Zionsville, Ind., even briefly featured a short video of herself scooting along on a Flying Turtle (Fig. 2.14) on her website.

Keep Product Moving

The simple act of transferring products from one part of the store to another can start them flowing to the cash register.

“Sometimes it’s just the display,” that’s prevented a toy from selling, noted Owner Teneen Dobbs of Kits & Kaboodle in Carmel, Ind.

"Customers are always looking for something new,” Kevin Hart, buyer for "The Toy Store" in Ansley Mall in Atlanta, Ga., told TDmonthly. “We rotate manufacturers by buying from one company one year and another the next. We also rotate the old merchandise so that it will be sure to be seen. We like to hear an excited customer say, "Wow, I have not seen anything like this before.”

“Sometimes we will switch out [window displays] every other day during busy vacation weeks,” said Smith, who operates in a tourist town.

Keep Them Buying ‘Til They’re Gone

No matter what the season, some of the most important displays are the point-of-purchase buckets and barrels of inexpensive and unusual toys that kids and parents can’t resist picking up once they’re at the cash register. These quick add-ons can really add up. In TDmonthly’s poll, 86 percent said they changed their POP displays at least monthly and 65 percent did it weekly.

When analyzing your sales per square foot, you can try comparing it to equivalent stores to evaluate your success. Jonathan Brandow, principal of BizMiner, an industry reporting agency, recommends requesting 10K reports from the Securities Exchange Commission on publicly traded toy stores.

“If you’re a smaller company, you’ll want to look at selling-cost-basis per square foot, rather than gross sales per square foot,” he advised.

His company also produces industry reports for smaller retailers, including gift shops, which might be more equivalent to your store (see Fig. 2.15).

What if your research reveals that your design still isn’t working and you don’t have the budget for a consultant?

Baylis noted that independent consultants might be willing to come in for a day, just to give advice. You can also hire consultants from fixture companies, such as his. Failing that, you might take a field trip and steal ideas from bigger, more successful retailers.

“They spend a lot of money figuring this out,” said Bayliss, who works almost exclusively with specialty retailers. “But you can walk around and say, ‘That's a good idea!’”

Also, watch how your customers move through the store. Is there an area where they get stuck, or something they’re avoiding, or a corner they never reach? Try rearranging your shelves and displays until the entire store becomes easy to navigate, with plenty of islands to slow buyers down.

OUTSOURCE YOUR STORAGE

If you find you don’t have enough space to store the rest of your inventory, don’t despair! Forty-five retailers have solved the problem before you. Here are some of their solutions:

Rent Outside Storage Space

The retailers who use this strategy are able to take advantage of bulk discounts, despite a small store footprint. “The savings more than make up for the increased cost,” said Mary Porter, owner of Curiosity Zone in Ashburn, Va.

Juggle Toys

Five retailers said they are very careful about when and how much they order, but they don’t miss out on trends by being undersupplied. “If something is hot, we order all we can, but go with minimums on others,” Peter Schwlurf, owner of Mr. Toad’s in Naples, Fla., told TDmonthly.

Baylis of Franklin Fixtures advised minimizing your backroom by placing overstock items on tops or bottoms of shelves (see Fig. 2.16). Some displays can also be arranged on the tops of the highest shelves to maximize product exposure.

 EVALUATE

Have your sales-per-square foot improved since you redesigned your space? If not, you need to go back and figure out why.

Your store should exist not only in the space you’re renting, but in the minds and imaginations of your customers. By creating a space that excites and entertains them, they will come back for more.