Our favourite discussion from the bespoke workshop:
How to develop your ‘Shop of the Future’
The 10 steps to commercial success
Don’t expect customers to love your shops if you don’t love them yourselves. Are your shops dirty and untidy, with broken lightbulbs?
You wouldn’t leave your houses like that if guests were coming round. Especially guests who were potentially going to give you money. So, as a priority keep your shops clean and tidy.
Prioritise a minimum standards, ‘zero tolerance’ approach to your shop estate and for every shop that you have.
Care for your customer, care for your products. So never run out of stock. Keep your shelves full, and make sure all your best sellers are on display, and not in the stockroom.
Ensure that your shop is appropriate and relevant for your customer demographic. Just as much as I am an advocate of visual merchandising, only put in the level that is required for your customer.
If they love beauty and have the time to admire it, then make your shop beautiful. If they don’t, then don’t waste money and effort on something which at the best will be invisible, and at worst irritating.
If customers don’t want beauty, give them efficiency, order and clarity, with the cleanliness thrown in for nothing.
How to develop your ‘Shop of the Future’
The 10 steps to commercial success
(2 day workshop)
I have worked on so many ‘Shop of the Future’ projects I’ve lost count.
What they usually signal is that the business has fallen behind and needs to develop something that is state of the art and best practice.
These are very important projects because they signal momentum and success to employees, customers and shareholders.
They are also an amazing opportunity to bring together a cross-functional team to create, develop and deliver this new concept.
From product to marketing, merchandising to operations, IT to compliance, design to shopfitting, everyone has a part to play.
This is why a ‘How to develop your ‘Shop of the Future’ workshop is an essential catalyst for such an important adventure.
The key to delivering these bespoke workshops is to research and customise beforehand, and to listen, adapt and personalise during.
They are a collaborative effort, with a communal benefit.
Together we can build a pathway and populate it with knowledge & tools.