By
Bob Phibbs
Updated November 4, 2024
Decorating a store is at the heart of great retailing. During these times, it will be the deciding factor in wowing wary shoppers and increasing impulse buying.
Various seasonal times and holidays can inspire retailers to create magic for their customers. Young and old anticipate the return of colored lights for a reason: it calms, inspires, and makes us hopeful.
Also, decorations go far beyond demonstrating a new skillet or an invitation-only event.
They pique a shopper’s curiosity to discover what is new.
Introducing new yet familiar elements to the shopping experience changes the energy of the entire store and encourages impulse buying. We're anxious to find a semblance of normality and hope right now.
Christmas, in particular, offers your store the chance to make a statement that wonder and magic lie behind its doors.
Dad could be a hero…
Mom could be a queen...
A brother who never got what he wanted for Christmas could buy his favorite gadget.
An aunt who lives thousands of miles away could purchase a thoughtful gift as a token of her love instead of buying a gift card at the local 7-11.
But if your store looks the same on December 10 as on September 10, that is less likely to happen.
One caveat before I continue: We aren’t talking about a big budget here.
While Saks and Tiffany’s can afford one-of-a-kind window displays and custom elements that customers can activate with their phones, decorating isn’t about technology but creating a different shopping environment.
The more you decorate, the more energy and excitement you bring to passersby.
I always recommend going big, going early, and going to town. This coming holiday season, I encourage you to string bright colored lights from building to building, across shop windows, and throughout your store.
One eye-catching way I decorated a rustic store was winding colored lights around dried grapevine to make it a visual wonderland overhead as you walked in and through the central aisle.
Well-decorated interiors and windows truly enchant us, causing us to come in and experience the feeling of the season rather than just be witnesses to it in passing.
What does it take to prepare your store to wow a smartphone-obsessed, me-centric consumer these days?
Here are the four main elements of holiday retail store decoration:
1. Lights. When you add strings of lights, you add color, energy, and magic. One of the first things I did when I took over a store—and this was during the summer—was to ring the front windows with miniature white lights. It caught interest, set us apart from stores on either side and brightened the windows. I can't over-stress this point—the more lights throughout your shop, the better.
2. Colors of the season. Whether it is spring pastels or holiday reds and greens, seasonal colors are temporary. For a retailer, decorating takes a bit more work and planning as you can't leave autumn leaves through February. Still, it also aligns the shopping experience you offer with seasonal celebrations.
3. Props that are appropriate help tell a story. It is easy to think of decor for a national celebration - like a flag on Independence Day. While a giant Christmas tree or fragile ornaments might be too much of an undertaking, your props can be as simple as putting Santa hats on your mannequins. At the start of the baseball season, you could add gloves, bats, and balls to those identical mannequins.
4. Signage that speaks to the season. So many merchants either avoid or forget well-conceived signs. But you need them, so during the holidays, over a mountain bike with a helmet, GoPro, and night gear, place a sign that says Dad, Be A Hero To Your Daughter. Around the wedding season, put a sign that says Forget The Tea Towels, Give ‘Em An Experience with a complete baking system and five at-home chef lessons, or around Mother’s Day, Make Up For That Broken Window When You Were 8 for any premium product. You get the idea.
Here are great examples of two retailers who go all out for seasonal and holiday events.
Pufferbellies in Staunton, Virginia, is one of my all-time favorite independent stores because they understand how to create wonder, magic, and emotion in their holiday decorations - as evidenced in these three Christmastime windows. (photos courtesy of Robbie Lawson)
Read how and why they created the magnificent window below here.
Malls, too, should invest like the Shops At Crystals in Las Vegas did
to capture the magic of wonder, as shown below.
What should you go all out to avoid?
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Clutter. While letting customers figure it out is tempting, we want them to focus on the best and brightest.
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Cheap paper or any other dollar store table ornaments. Going cheap signals to shoppers that you are trying to cut corners on returns and quality.
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A picture of an appropriate holiday decoration instead of the decoration itself. Buy the decoration and display it accordingly.
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Old decorations that are torn, worn, or just plain ugly. You want to look new, fresh, and inviting. There's vintage, and then there's garage sale. If in doubt, throw it out.
In addition, I always suggest staying clear of any one specific religion to keep your store as welcoming as possible to all.
It takes some work to create magic, but it's much more fun than same-old.
In Sum
There is a reason better merchants pull out all the stops during December – it jolts jaded shoppers into the higher brain area that engages a sense of childlike wonder.
Look at the cost of a fully decorated retail store as a marketing expense that makes your store a destination—a place deserving of a shopper’s time, investment, and curiosity.
Convert holiday shoppers into a volunteer marketing army when you do it right.
When you go cheap, you stay at another also-ran, bland, boring warehouse of goods in search of someone’s money.
But when you use a strategy of preparing for the holidays to make your decorated store fresh, you help make it fun.
And it bears repeating: Use more lights than you think you should!
