Updated July 19, 2024
New York City brick-and-mortar retailers like Macy's and have always known the power of . But as a brick-and-mortar retailer, have you stopped to consider the power of visual merchandising as part of your holiday preparations for your own ?
Here's a case study of a toy retailer who created magic in Staunton, VA, in the Shenandoah Valley, near where my mom was born.
Robbie Lawson helped Pufferbellies Toys & Books do something amazing one holiday season using their incredible visual merchandising skills. It gave back a sense of wonder and pride in a way few stores can do.
Erin Branton, a co-owner, told me how it all started: "Robbie is a family friend who works with my dad at Taylor & Boody Organbuilders near Staunton.
He and his family shop at Pufferbellies often, too. I saw some photos of a model he made of a church that they were building an organ for and asked him if he could make gingerbread houses.
He, myself, and my parents (my mom, Susan, is my business partner, and my dad helps with everything) sat down and discussed which buildings we'd like to feature. Robbie went and photographed all of them before starting to build his models."
"One of the buildings, the Masonic, houses my brother's gelato shop, The Split Banana, and our all-time favorite Mexican restaurant, the Baja Bean Co., so we HAD to feature that one!
The church is Trinity Episcopal, which has a ton of history. It also has real Tiffany windows, which Robbie photographed and printed on vellum to recreate the stained-glass effect."
"There were some seriously forward-thinking people that stood up for these buildings and that helped put us ahead of the game in terms of creating a vital downtown today. So anyway, we're nuts about downtown Staunton and wanted to do something that would honor it."
One thing about Staunton that makes it stand out among other downtowns is that it has tons of original buildings that survived urban renewal during the last century.
They came up with fake gingerbread houses built using foam board, hot glue, latex caulk, and plastic candy to recreate six historic buildings. (You can see a set of 36 on Robbie's Facebook page.)
While these pics are amazing...They're not why I'm writing this post with visual merchandising tips.
It's because no matter how jaded you might be at cloyingly cute holiday commercials or how sick you might be of hearing White Christmas in retail stores, I'll bet you were taken with these pictures.
No video. No Twitter feed. No digital effects.
Even with minimal merch from the toy store in the window, you, for those brief moments, became like Ralphy in A Christmas Story.
It works because so much of what we see across the retail landscape are windows filled with merchandising units that take up the lower 10 feet.
Most holiday store windows only allow minimal natural light into the store while blocking the view of the outside world.
This has rendered much of modern retail design sterile, imposing, and devoid of emotion.
Because well-done shop windows let us do either of two things:
That is the gift Pufferbellies and Robbie Lawson gave to the nearly 24,000 people who live in Staunton this holiday season. Pufferbellies also did this when they restored their storefront with original street-level doors, window frames, moldings, and trim.
When you embrace visual merchandising for Christmas windows, you'll discover that window displays act as in-store marketing spotlighting a few select products.
You can attract customers and sell them items through good lighting and creative merchandising before they walk through the door.
When Main Street retailers discuss what independent stores do for a community, they often mention how they "give back to the community" through donations to worthy causes.
But the one thing I think many miss is what they can give back with their creativity, love of their town, and desire to see the delighted and surprised faces of shoppers.
And many miss the cross-merchandising aspects of a well-planned window. The ability to show a system of fun, a bundle of products adjacent to one main item that not only looks good, but increase UPT.
In a world struggling with an onslaught of technology, these committed owners bring humanity back to its core. Their visual merchandiser skills pulled off an amazing feeling in their retail customers.
Not buy one; get one free...
And not another friends and family promotion or online group buying discount but about making Christmas shopping fun and festive, whether in a winter wonderland or a sunny beach-side resort.
Visual merchandising Christmas windows is all about surprise and delight.
In your windows. In your stores. In your customer's faces...
