Poor Sears. It’s not easy to find much positive press about America’s ex-largest retailer. A blog on TWICE magazine’s website kind of sums up how I feel about today’s Sears: good, affordable products and services, well-trained staff, but no design pizzazz. As a result, the blogger and I see the same thing at Sears: Sometimes there are more mannequins than customers.

The blog triggered memories of my mom dragging my brother and me to Sears for sturdy, conservative school clothes that we detested. But the stores were bustling with shoppers back then. I knew nothing about store design at that age. I do now. And I think that the uninspired design and layout of most Sears stores contributes to dearth of customers.

I mentioned a few blogs back that a multistory Crate & Barrel is being built several miles from my home. It’s walking distance from the Sears store in the same upscale mall. They even share the parking lot. Both retailers carry furniture, home accessories and kitchenware. I’ll be quite interested in seeing which store generates more foot traffic.

Then there’s Collage, a nondescript greeting-card store in an Oregon strip mall. A story in the Bend Bulletin reveals that it’s far more. Owner Tanya Murren uses the shop as a research lab to find out what’s hot and what’s not in the greeting-card industry. She’s really a card wholesaler with 60 to 70 sales reps calling on stores nationwide. But the Oregon store helps her take the pulse of the industry.

Why have I mentioned Sears and Collage in one blog? Because I think this is one instance where Goliath could learn something from David. For all its marketing muscle and (I assume) research on consumer buying habits, Sears hasn’t learned how important retail store design really is to shoppers. Murren, on the other hand, doesn’t care much about store design, but operates a store so she can find out what customers want.

Your store should be a retail research lab, too. If it’s not, it might be a Sears-in-waiting.

With the constant buzz about how huge discounters like Wal-Mart are crushing the little guys, I’m glad to see a respected source confirm it isn’t necessarily so.

Furniture World Magazine has published highlights of a scholarly survey on the preferences and expectations of people living in three small American communities. The result: More than 50% of the 328 participants shopped with independent retailers several times a week.

The survey is from InformeDesign, a design institute created by the University of Minnesota. It’s a great site on its own, with a huge archive of useful articles for retailers.

Small retailers, the survey says, can be competitive by providing a “transparent shopping experience.” What does that mean? Good merchandising is the key to attracting and retaining customers. Shoppers like stores that:

• Are easy to navigate
• Display products clearly and consistently
• Provide lots of room to search for and examine merchandise
• Are connected to their communities by supporting local events, organizations or schools

Although the survey looked at rural areas, I think the authors got it right on this as well: “Small independent retailers will struggle if they try to compete on the basis of price.” I find this to be true in the big city as well as the outskirts. Price won’t be a factor if, as the survey says, you give customers well-designed stores, unique products and positive shopping experiences.

Click Here to see our complete gallery of
San Francisco 49ers team store pictures.

America’s appetite for football expresses itself in, among other things, the bottomless consumption of team memorabilia. (Giant foam finger anyone? A life-size adhesive vinyl wall graphic perhaps?) NFL teams across the nation are tapping this rich vein through team stores. These team stores, usually located onsite at the stadium, carry jerseys, hats, signed memorabilia, and other items.

TRIO has designed NFL team stores for the Seattle Seahawks and the Chicago Bears, so it wasn’t surprising when the San Francisco 49ers came calling. “We didn’t have a walk-in location, and we wanted to improve the fans’ shopping experience,” said Scott Justice, 49ers Operations Manager. Justice had seen projects TRIO had designed for the New York Yankees and the San Francisco Giants, and that led to the call.

The specs called for a novel 2000 square-foot design to be built right in the stadium parking lot using a tent-like exo-structure surrounding inner partitioning and fixture and displays.

The TRIO design team, using plenty of gold, burgundy, and black, the team colors, plotted an aggressive layout optimized for speed of service. Included were six POS stations fronted by a two-level build-out combining acrylic bins to hold impulse buys and programs.

Slatwall anchors the wall displays. The client chose slatwall for its flexibility—ready-made slatwall accessories are available for apparel, gifts, books, jewelry, housewares, and more in many different finishes. The design team chose a wood-tone Formica finish in “Vosges Pear,” a medium-brown that goes well with gold.

Bumped-out columns break up the broad expanse of slatwall to create interest. A custom video display sits at one end of the lozenge-shaped store—the monitor rests on a glassed showcase featuring video product. To keep the floor display lively, the design team plotted a mix of gondolas, pinwheels, and nested tables (in powder-coated black) finished in the team colors. Track lighting with metal halide bulbs (for efficiency, longevity, and color rendition) spotlights featured products while low-bay lighting does the heavy lifting with the ambient light.

The 49ers team store will officially open in the first week of August, just in time for the start of exhibition season, and hopefully, a serious run at the NFC West crown.

My last blog was about how tire dealers are going upscale to attract female customers. It’s been trendy lately to write about the purchasing power of women.

This online article is one of the first I’ve seen that cites research to show that “Men are imminently more comfortable hanging out at the mall” than they used to be. More than 42 million men are now considered the primary shopper for their households, one research firm says. A 2003 study says men were responsible for 70% of their own clothing purchases, up from 48% in 1998. Even traditional “mostly women” Stein Mart has started advertising in Esquire and GQ.

Keep the following in mind about men when laying out or redesigning your store, the experts say:

• They zero in on targets very quickly.
• They pay no attention to high signage. They stare into space. They reach for the familiar.
• They tend to buy themselves little treats and stray from the shopping list as they get more familiar with a store’s layout.
• The older he is, the less he probably views shopping as pleasurable.
• If he can’t march in, “kill something and drag it out,” it’s been an unsuccessful trip.

I know I’m going to make an effort to study the layout of successful male-oriented stores I visit. Stalwarts like The Sharper Image, Brooks Brothers and Eddie Bauer would be good places to start. See you there, guys.

I blogged recently about an auto-body repair shop that impressed me with its concern for customer comfort. I also did a blog in March about tire dealers cleaning up their retail act. Why? Because they want more female customers.

Now it looks like more tire dealers are on the road to “spectacular showrooms” to attract women, according to this online article at TireReview.com. The industry is focusing not just on clean restrooms, but also on customer comfort and lots of amenities.

The article notes that a recent survey found women now make more than 80% of the buying decisions in American households, including auto buying and maintenance decisions. Big retailers are taking notice of such statistics. Even Harley-Davidson is pitching directly to women on its website.

I like what a tire marketing executive says in the article: “We’re paying more attention to the upper portions of the showrooms–from eye level and up. The upper portion of the walls is ideal for specially designed valance systems, basically borders three times larger than the borders you have in your home, that are a great means of displaying products, services, etc.”

Another exec notes that “A stack of magazines and outdated chairs just aren’t enough anymore. We believe that, if you don’t do something to improve the looks of your showroom to market your products better, you’ll be left behind.”

I applaud firms like these who not only realize who they should appeal to, but also for recognizing the importance of good retail design. You owe it to your business to do the same: Learn who your customers are and make them feel like guests instead of just shoppers. Otherwise, your business just might go flat.

By Jeff Grant
Hear that? It’s the sinister whisper of poor inventory control sucking dollars out of your bottom line. In fact, inventory control and management can often be the decider between whether a small business succeeds or fails. How does this happen?

The basic mechanism is uncomplicated. A customer comes in to buy an item and it’s out of stock and you lose the sale. You could be ordering too much of the wrong item and wasting valuable shelf space or not keeping enough of the right item on the shelf, but too many lost sales, and the end result is the same: You’re out of business.

“It’s common, especially when a small retailer is expanding her business, to lose sight of just how important keeping track of inventory is,” says Sasha Unruh, TRIO Display’s resident inventory control guru. “Scaling up your inventory management system to meet the demands of growing retail space sometimes requires a complete shift in how you handle inventory. Successful businesses make the jump; unsuccessful businesses merely enlarge their existing system.”

The Basics of Inventory Management
What you want to do with inventory is ensure that every item earns its place in the storeroom. You’re looking to weigh the cost of storing the inventory versus the profit of the sale. The longer an item sits on the shelf, the more it eats into the profit (except in the case of wine and antiques, natch).

Okay, so beyond the obvious aim to make sure that you have just enough inventory, not too much or too little, there are other considerations. Here are some…

• Keeping a good selection of stock without spreading the best sellers too shallow.
• Encouraging stock inventory turnover without detracting from service.
• Ordering enough inventory to qualify for volume discounts without ordering items that don’t move.

There are several basic inventory methods. All have their positives and negatives.

• Visual Control: You visually assess your stock to determine whether you need to reorder or not.
• Tickler Control: Count a representative sample from your inventory every day on a rotating basis.
• Stub Control: Retain part of the price tag each time an item is sold.

Rudimentary and open to error, these methods are only recommended for retailers with small amounts of inventory, SKUs, and employees. If you’re running a jewelry shop by yourself, this might work, but retail moves so fast that if you plan on growing your business, you’ll want a more robust system.

That’s where a Point-of-Sale system comes into play. A POS system complemented by the right software connects cash management (the cash register) with back-office operations to create seamless inventory management. Programs such as Keystroke will keep a detailed audit trail, store a complete transaction history, automate ordering and receiving, and, of course, have real-time quantity and cost updating. The software tracks and accounts for gift cards, sales, and coupons. Some POS systems will even “speak” to your supplier’s computer and automatically notify it that product needs to be shipped. (Click to see TRIO’s complete line of POS systems.) The future of retail is moving toward a day when every retailer, large and small, will need to have a POS system that incorporates accounts receivables, sales information, and individual customer histories in one place.

Securing Inventory
No conversation about inventory management is complete without a mention of security. Loss prevention is a pillar of good inventory management, whether that loss is coming through employee theft or shoplifting. Keeping an accurate count of stock is one way to foil employee theft, but tagging your product with security labels and using a radio transceiver security system is a great way to combat both. (Click to read here The Retailer’s Guide to Preventing Shoplifting.)

Quick Tips for Improving Your Inventory Management
When you receive goods…
• Confirm the number matches the delivery receipt.
• Look for damage to the outside of the delivery box.
• Open boxes and inspect merchandise for damage.

If merchandise is damaged…
• Keep damaged merchandise at the drop-off point.
• Notify carrier of damage.
• Take notes.

When the carrier arrives…
• Read carrier’s damage report before signing.
• Do not use or throw-way merchandise without carrier’s permission.
• Obtain written authorization from the manufacturer before returning merchandise.

I keep trying to not blog about Apple. But they just me gave another reason to do so.

I didn’t really want to go near the Apple Store near me last weekend because of all the crowds expected for the iPhone debut. But I was in the Fashion Valley mall anyway, there was no line outside the door and I needed to buy a program for my Mac.

What a surprise: The entire layout of the store has been completely redone–for the better. The cash wrap, which had been just a few feet straight ahead of the entrance, was gone. It’s now at the very back, a great way to pull customers all the way through the store. And besides, the old cash wrap often had multiple lines of customers, which forced people entering to squeeze by them.

While the previous layout felt cramped, the new one actually makes the same space seem larger. The center aisle of the store is much more open and conducive to browsing. The tables on both sides of the aisle are spaced well apart and filled with hardware, further encouraging foot traffic. All the software programs are on one wall, with the best sellers at eye level. Some salespeople carry wireless POS (point-of-sale) devices that ring up purchases, accept credit cards and print receipts on the spot.

There was a crowd at the iPhone table, but those early adapters had plenty of room to congregate. Larger than the others, the table had even more space around it, so everyone could get their hands on the media darling.

I don’t know if the sales floors of other Apple Stores have been redesigned. But I think it would be a good idea for their managers to see the Fashion Valley store in San Diego, California. And I’ll say it again: Look at the design leaders like Apple, the Gap, Crate & Barrel, and Restoration Hardware. Study their layouts, then think about how you can emulate them in your store. I don’t think they’ll mind at all.