Sorry, Kermit the Frog, but it’s easier than ever to be green. Whether you sell hard goods or food, customers want to know that your business is part of the green movement. This article in the Boston Business Journal points out that even if your store is green, you need to tell customers about it. If you don’t, they’re likely to shop at greener pastures.

If you’re in a newer or upgraded building, it might already meet the green standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). If you don’t know, find out. Then make sure you communicate your green efforts in everything from window displays to POS flyers to email newsletters.

If you’re not already green, it’s easy to start by using fluorescent light bulbs, low-flow toilets and even carpeting made from recycled materials. If you’re contemplating building or leasing a new space, work with architects who have LEED experience. They can make the process a lot easier for you.

If you’re in the restaurant or foodservice industry, going green can mean offering organically grown products, using biodegradable packaging, and making or accepting deliveries in hybrid or low-emission vehicles.

When you do go green, be sure all employees are fully briefed on the benefits it makes to customers, your neighborhood and the greater community. Staff should be your “green ambassadors,” telling environmentally aware customers about your green initiatives and educating the rest about their importance.

It’s obvious the green movement is here to stay. If you fail to get on board, the only green you’ll experience will be envy of your competitors who are on board.

Most jewelry stores look pretty much alike. So do surfwear shops. Shoppers have certain expectations before entering each type of store: low glass cabinets in jewelry stores and racks of colorful clothing in surfwear shops. These layouts probably make customers feel comfortable. But they don’t necessarily mean they’ll come back. After all, they can walk into any other jewelry or surfwear store instead of being loyal to one in particular.

That’s why I applaud Ross-Simons Jewelers in New England and O’Neill Clothing in Anaheim, California. Both retailers thought way out of the box when planning their new store layouts. I like Ross-Simons’ senior designer’ analogy of how buying diamonds is like buying chocolate — you have to figure out how to get shoppers to look at them. In this case, it was using high-end lighting to showcase high-dollar jewelry, and rotating turntables with LED lights.

Ross-Simon also knows the demographics of its customers. Watches and first-time engagement rings are big sellers, so separate areas of the store were designed to make those who buy them feel special. Music and fragrances help create a warm, inviting atmosphere. I could go on, but read the article and learn from some savvy designers.

The O’Neill shop is the first clothing-only store for the wetsuit manufacturer. The O’Neill brand has been around for 50 years, and the designers wanted the flagship store to reflect that heritage. I think they succeeded admirably with “The Hut” in the middle of the store, under an eco resign ceiling to give the feeling of being under water. Images of Team O’Neill riders in action drive home the commitment the retailer has to the surf industry and its customers. A “Wave Wall” displays a kelp forest, walls and cushions are made from neoprene wetsuit material — the list goes on. Read the article and look at the photos to see how much creativity washed over the store.

Ross-Simon and O’Neill are great examples of retailers who understand their customers and give them a shopping experience instead of just a place to shop. Is your store a diamond in the rough or a mushy wave of design? Take a good look and see if you can find ways to make them sparkle.

I thought I sensed a trend when I started seeing retail shops with few or no storefront windows. According to a blog on Inc.com, there is a method to this madness. It gives shoppers who “get it” the feeling that they’re entering an exclusive world that caters to their needs, desires and, most important, their emotions. After all, the best shopping experiences are those that make an emotional connection with the customer, whether it’s for clothing, home electronics or left-handed can openers.

I especially like the reply at the end about a streetware shop in Boston that looks a timeworn convenience store. When you get inside, a soda machine slides to the side to reveal the real, inner store. The poster says to ignore their website, but I say it only adds to the mystique. Check it out at www.bdgastore.com.

Getting back to the original blog, it makes some good points that bear repeating. If you want customers to really feel emotionally tied to your store, make sure your sales associates treat them like they’re the most important person in their life. Arrange the merchandise to capture shoppers’ imagination. Make them feel like something even more exciting is just around the next shelf.

How do you know what customers want? Start by asking deeper questions, this article from ChiefMarketer.com suggests. You don’t just to know what they’re looking for, but you also need to “draw meaningful conclusions” about the data they provide or that you obtain from paid market research. The article is written for corporate marketers, but you can apply the concept to any size store or chain. The ultimate goal is to get customers to ask, “Why would we ever shop anywhere else?”

Make shopping an emotional experience. Know what your customers are shopping for and why they shop for it. Take care of those two concepts and you should find success at the POS, whether it’s behind a windowless facade or a great big window display.

From Akron, Ohio, to Manchester, England, to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, examples of great store design are yours to discover. If you own or run a retail business, you should be constantly on the lookout for eye-catching merchandising, whether in person or online.

My designers and I like to surf the web frequently to find inspiration for the stores our firm designs. I recently came across photos of the winning entries in the Association for Retail Environments’ annual design competition. I especially like the first image of the wine shop in Rohnert Park, California. The long gondolas invite exploration. The bottles on the top shelf presumably are available in the shelves directly below them. The skylight looks like it’s filled with either all-green wine bottles or wine glasses. Either way, it’s a dramatic effect that shows customers they are in a place that truly values wine.

Most of the other photos show a retail trend that I’ve notice recently, especially in mall stores: floor-to-ceiling wall displays. When done right, such displays give a store a more spacious feel, and invite shoppers to come to literally look high and low for merchandise.

Over in Steamboat Springs, a mother-and-daughter team have learned how to stay afloat in the tourist town. They’ve had to move their home furnishings and gift shop to a more affordable part of town, and let employees go to make ends meet. They have a dog named Earl who keeps kids and husbands occupied. They have after-school programs for kids, and host weekly gatherings of knitters and crocheters. They’ve made a name for themselves in the community, and it pays off.

Another Steamboat Spring merchant created an “arts and crafts gym.” Except it’s not really a gym. Artists can, however, store their stuff in gym lockers and use the easels, lights and other equipment. The concept has worked well and the owner is still selling memberships to those who want to flex their artistic muscle without having to rent a studio or invest in equipment.

Just a few ideas to start your design juices flowing. Great ideas are all around you, in the virtual and brick-and-mortar worlds. Don’t be timid about exploring. The next great idea could come from you.

If you’ve ever worked in a clothing store, you know what a chore it is to keep all the merchandise neatly folded. You see it all the time in department stores as well: piles of clothes left on dressing room benches and hanging from wall hooks. But it turns out there’s a whole subculture of former and current employees who are compulsive folders.

The Wall Street Journal uncovered this strange retail obsession and interviews those afflicted with it in this article. There’s even a short video of a longtime Gap employee and store manager showing the right way to fold denim jeans.

While some former clothes folders got the habit out of their system as soon as they left the retail floor, many are still caught in its grip. One even calls it her domestic therapy.

Personally, I think that training sales associates in necessary evils such as clothes-folding help storeowners separate those who can succeed in retail and those who can’t. If they roll up their sleeves while creasing the pleats, they’ll probably be good at other facets of retail, such as customer service and up-selling. If they don’t have the discipline to go with the fold, they might be better at something more creative and less repetitive.

Those are generalizations, of course, but the article tells me that detail- and service-oriented staff can help a business earn customer loyalty. That’s especially true with high-end clientele, according to another article on OrlandoSentinel.com. “The luxury consumer is more driven by customer service, even more than price,” the chairman of a research firm says.

I say customer service is important at every consumer level, from 99-cent stores to Rodeo Drive. Whether you sell clothes or hardware, it pays to welcome every new employee to the fold — whatever your version of it may be.

I was at one of San Diego’s biggest outdoor malls the other morning on a business call. It was 9:45 a.m., 15 minutes before most of the stores opened. I noticed that one already had a long line of customers waiting outside. It was the only store in the mall with such a line. Not surprisingly, it was the Apple Store.

This wasn’t the day that the new and improved iPhone hit the market. I would expect a line on that day. This was just an ordinary weekday.

You probably know I’m a Mac fanatic. I love their products but I continue to marvel at their merchandising. The front window had a huge flat-screen TV configured as an iPhone, with a video on the screen showing off all the phone’s new features. That was it. No signage. No banners. Yet people in the line couldn’t take their eyes off it.

When the store opened, the shoppers were immediately greeted by casually dressed Mac Specialists and Geniuses, as the company calls them. Within minutes, the entire store was humming with as folks got their questions answered about hardware, software and accessories.

When you think about it, how many other stores do you know that have lines outside before they even open? I’ve never seen any outside Fry’s or Circuit City, with the possible exception of the days when killer new video games debut. Apple continues to reinvent itself, and the brand seems stronger than ever. When people like my brother, a PC devotee for years, are considering switching to the Mac, you know they’re doing something right.

On a similar but more caloric note, I love this Washington Post story about Larry Feldman, the “Secretary of Sandwich.” He started a company that now franchises more than 1,000 Subway locations, and he’s rolling in dough.

But he knows that to be successful, you can’t sell just sandwiches. His insists that his franchisees’ employees also must sell service. Watch the short series of video interviews with Feldman. He calls the food preparers “Sandwich Artists.” He talks about how an employee mopping the floor 30 minutes before the midnight closing treated him like a nuisance instead of a welcome guest (the guy was later terminated).

Apples and sandwiches. The two products couldn’t be more different. But the way they’re marketed and merchandised is surprisingly similar. Visit an Apple Store, then go grab a Subway sandwich. You’ll get plenty of food for thought at both places.

Unemployment’s up. Retail spending is down. And Halloween merchandise is already on store shelves. Are you ready for the fast-approaching holiday season?

Last year, we published “The Retailer’s Guide to Holiday Themes,” which had some ideas for slightly better economic times. Some of those ideas, such as using art student interns to create your store window displays, are still viable. This year, however, we don’t have to remind you how the national credit crunch and mortgage meltdown are affecting consumer spending at retail. So unless you’ve set aside a nest egg for advertising and promotions, you’ll have to get creative to lure shoppers into their $4-a-gallon gas guzzlers and drive over to your shop.

Speaking of driving, consider giving gasoline gift cards for different spending thresholds, such as $10 for each $100 a customer buys in your store. If you’re in an area with a good metro transit system, offer tokens, passes or other incentives for those who take public transportation to your place.

Publish a holiday calendar that you can mail or email your customers. Let them know which days you’ll be holding holiday sales or in-store events. If you have a website, post the same information on a special holiday calendar page. Or borrow a page from the Obama campaign and send text-message reminders to customers who’ve opted in to your cell phone list.

Get together with your retail neighbors to hold open-house nights with refreshments, youth chorales and other low-cost entertainment. Many small-town downtowns and shopping areas do this annually, sometimes culminating with a holiday parade and Christmas tree lighting. Work with your chamber of commerce to see what events are planned and how you can join in.

If you’re civic-minded and spend time during the holiday season helping out at places like soup kitchens and homeless shelters, encourage your customers to do the same. Have them verify the hours they donate and offer to match a percentage of your holiday sales based on those hours. Giant corporations like American Express are working with cardholders who want to perform similar good deeds at MembersProject.com. Check it out and see if you can either work with AE or urge your customers to do the same.

Remember, more than ever, the spoils of this holiday shopping season will go to the retailers who offer the most to their shoppers and communities. Show them how much you care and they’ll be certain to reward you with a happy, healthy season where it counts the most: at your POS.

If you need any more convincing that consumers enjoy “retail shopping experiences” vs. “just going to the store,” read about the new Fountains Shopping Mall as reported in Roseville, California’s Press-Tribune. Fountains is kind of an “un-mall;” an indoor-outdoor environment with something to attract the kids as well as their money-spending parents.

The experience includes a water/light show, children’s interactive water feature, community stage and kid’s playground. Not to mention upscale shops like Anthologie, Z Gallerie, West Elm and Chico’s. It reminds me of The Grove at Farmers Market in Los Angeles. Both are laid out along a Main Street type of grid that encourages shoppers to see what’s just around the corner or down the next side street. Both also have dancing water-and-light shows, which are always crowd-pleasers.

Interesting to read that the developers originally planned a big-box center with the likes of Wal-Mart, Home Depot and other high-profile retailers. That didn’t seem to fit the “destination” experience, so the developers went back to the drawing board and came up with the city-center type of design. To me, that shows that adding entertainment and community involvement to the retail mix are surefire elements for success.

Your store might not be large enough yet to justify joining a center like the Fountains or The Grove. But you should check out places like them to get ideas on how the retailers are merchandising to the steady of stream of shoppers attracted by the experience. If you are large enough, figure out your cost per square foot before signing a lease. There might be a lot of design and other considerations you need to be aware, of including sales-percentage fees. Whatever you decide to do, walk away dedicated to make shopping at your store a splashy experience, even if no water is involved.

With its low margins and costly overhead, retail grocery is one of those businesses that you have to love to stay in it. It’s evident from this article in The New York Times that twin brothers Tom and Jeff Heinen have an identical love of the business. The way they run their 17 Cleveland-area stores shows their deep appreciation not only of gourmet-quality food but also of their loyal customer base.

The article writer examines the Heinen Fine Foods chain from the consumer perspective. But any retailer could take important lessons from the story. First of all, the brothers make it a point to listen every day to phoned-in comments from their customers. They make it easy by putting the phone number at the bottom of some receipts. The brothers also visit all their stores regularly — and the competition’s — to get a feel for what’s happening out there.

The brothers also know the habits of their target customer very well: middle- and upper-class shoppers who want to know more about where their food comes from and if it’s top-quality. So the Heinen’s work closely with their food vendors to find “great values” in cheese and other products, then merchandise them as such. They’re up against competitors like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, so they have to stay on top of things to ensure customer loyalty.

Customer service also is very important at Heinen’s. The story points out that “Heinen’s has 50 stories that it trains employees to tell customers about its meat, produce, baked goods and other items.” A great idea. Every retailer should an equivalent training program.

The design of the Heinen’s stores looks fresh and appealing, just like their food. I think the brothers have a great formula for success. Their profits may be low-margin, but the brothers and their customers receive high satisfaction for a retailing job well done.

With Thanksgiving just two weeks away and Christmas/New Year’s not far behind, you should have your holiday-season merchandising strategy in place by now. The large retailers certainly do. This season looks to be very competitive, with aggressive price cutting on big-ticket items like widescreen HD TVs, computers and other highly desirable items. And the big guys got sort of sneaky with their holiday advertising, starting with subtle hints in October.

How can you carve a niche for yourself this holiday season? You don’t have to spend big bucks to draw people into your store. But don’t be a Scrooge, either. You should be on the lookout year-round for holiday-season design elements. Non-traditional items like chili pepper string lights might make a good start. Or go with all-white string lights instead of the standard red and green. You know your customers best. Shake them up once in a while with unexpected holiday displays.

Changing out your windows displays regularly conveys to shoppers that yours is a store that keeps up with the times. If you’re selling dinnerware, fore example, a window display with a table set for Thanksgiving is a natural. You can even buy a faux turkey on eBay.

I found a pop-art style plastic Christmas tree set at a local chain hardware store. It would look right at home in a kids’ store or a downtown department store. The price tag? Only $25 each. I can just see a forest of them in a creative retailer’s windows and aisles.

If you don’t feel artistic enough to tackle such projects, consider students or recent grads of local design schools.

You only need to look at a holiday calendar to plan upcoming display change-outs. From New Year’s to July 4th to Christmas, you can find a theme that suits the time of year. Need help finding the appropriate displays? You can find plenty of display wholesalers in the Yellow Pages or online. But don’t forget non-traditional outlets like Party City, where you can obtain all kinds of accessories and decorations for just about any theme imaginable.

If you don’t feel artistic enough to tackle such projects, consider students or recent grads of local design schools. They’re usually eager to add to their portfolio, so have them come up with a holiday concept for your store. If you like it, reward them with merchandise, cash or an internship. Take advantage of their enthusiasm at this stage of their career. You might be the springboard for a future store-design legend. Also review the jobs-wanted postings at VMSD.com to find a pro who will work for a moderate fee. The cost should be more than offset by the increase in sales.

It goes without saying that shoppers love to see imaginatively arranged mannequins. Dress them up for the holidays, with scarves, caps, gloves and other Christmastime fashions. Get creative. If you sell surfboards, put one under the arm of a wet-suited mannequin wearing a Santa’s cap, and sprinkle sand around its feet.

If you think mannequins are too expensive, think again. The price range is vast. You can always start with a used mannequin, then build your collection as your budget allows. Featuring the same mannequin(s) from season to season in clever window displays will have your customers looking forward to their next visit.

Remember to check out the windows and interiors of stores that are know for great holiday themes. Eddie Bauer, Target and Restoration Hardware are chains that come to mind. But each city and town has its own cadre of retail stores that are known for their imaginative themes. Pay them a visit to get some free lessons.

Shoppers line up the by the thousands to see the elaborate window displays at legendary New York department stores like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. Inside, they’re greeted by even more eye candy, as each department seemingly tries to outdo its neighbors. It helps to have a huge budget to pull off great visual merchandising like this. But with a little imagination, you can get customers talking about your creative holiday themes, too.