The design of your store has a significant impact on its success.
In addition to being the best way to showcase your style and display your merchandise to customers, store design also influences the “feel” of your store and makes it a more approachable place to shop.
When staging is done well, it will increase your sales and help ensure long-term success. If you’re like lots of consignment store owners, though, you’re not sure how to start staging your store.
Fortunately, it’s not as hard as it seems.
3 Tips for Staging Your Consignment Store
Improve your store’s layout and boost sales by keeping by following these tips and tricks:
1. Avoid Clutter
Many consignment stores will try and push as much merchandise as possible into the front of the store. The idea, here, is to try and grab customer attention as soon as they walk in.
As it turns out, though, this approach can harm your business.
Here’s why:
The first few feet of any shop is known as the “decompression zone.” This is the space where customers get acquainted with the store. It’s where they survey the “lay of the land,” so to speak.
As such, placing lots of merchandise within the first few feet of your store is a sure way to overwhelm your customers and lower the chance of selling those items.
Instead, ensure you’re setting all merchandise back a ways, so customers feel comfortable when they walk in. You also want to avoid over-staging other of your store.
Multiple centerpieces on a table, for example, or an abundance of accessories on a mannequin distracts the customer and makes sales more difficult.
Staging should showcase your merchandise and promote the creativity of your customers. With this in mind, avoid clutter and focus on providing an excellent customer experience, instead. For best results, be sure you’re prepping your items for staging, as well.
2. Keep Your Store Feeling Fresh
Many customers visit consignment shops routinely since new merchandise is always on its way in. With this in mind, make sure those customers see fresh displays every time they walk into a store.
If you can, move items to different parts of the store, replace accessories or centerpieces, and add new splashes of color frequently. Additionally, watch where you place large items. If customers can’t walk freely without knocking something over, you need to create more space.
These simple tips keep your store feeling fresh, new, and exciting, for your existing and first-time customers alike.
3. Appeal to All Senses
Customers make purchasing decisions based on all of their senses, not just what they see. With this in mind, keep your store smelling fresh and clean (retail chains have been using scent marketing to sell items for decades). Put on some energetic music, and take care with how you light your items.
By providing a comprehensive sensory experience for your customers, you boost the chance of making a big sale and help ensure they enjoy their time in your store.
Staging for Success
While store staging may seem like a challenging obstacle to overcome, these three tips can give you a head-start. Apply them to your store and be sure to leave room to improvise according to your merchandise, customer base, and seasonal items.
