Research has shown that in-store music influences customers from the moment they walk in your door. It connects to a person’s emotions and can be used to relax, excite, entertain and motivate a shopper while adding value to your store’s brand. Further, music can have an influence on sales by increasing “stay time” and slowing down the pace of travel throughout a store, potentially increasing the amount of money a person will spend during their visit.

This study by Michael Morrison of Monash University in Australia presents case studies on the use of in-store music by several international brands. His critique of various retail environments from Abercrombie & Fitch to Borders Books demonstrates the importance of not just having music in your store, but making sure that the music you choose is representative of your customer’s tastes and the overall image you want for your brand.

Of course, there are critics of in-store music. Some warn of music so loud or so out of synch with the customer demographic that shoppers leave early. Target stores refrain from using music because they feel that it gives customers a way to determine just how long they have been in the store, causing them to leave earlier then they would have otherwise.

As a store designer and planner, my personal experience is that those of my clients who pay attention to the music used in their stores feel that they have increased sales and customer satisfaction. I encourage my clients to work with an experienced music provider to develop a program that works for their retail environment. Here are a few of those providers whose websites you can review:

http://www.muzak.com
http://www.dmx.com
http://www.creativeretail.com

Take some time to think about your customer base and your brand image and how music could be employed to enhance the overall success of your store. You just might have your cash registers singing right along with your customers.

You Still Have a Store? (February 4th) Evangelizing the importance of the web for a retailer’s overall strategy continued to be a common theme for this blog as noted in this post.

Addicted to Text (April 24th) Taking a cue from the Obama Campaign (or was it the other way around?), retailers harnessed the power of the text message as an alternative method of keeping in touch with their customers.

Is Your Store Your Customers’ Favorite? (June 4th) A long time mantra of mine, this ideal became even more important as the competition for customers heated up throughout the later part of 2008.

Go Green to Stay Out of the Red (September 9th) I’m incredibly pleased that this trend continued to gain steam throughout the year as retailers recognized both the environmental and financial benefits to going green.

The Many Ways to Get Into Retail (October 6th) Times of economic hardship can be windows of opportunity, and this post reminded me that the clever and the resilient can find themselves better off as a result of it.

The writing is pretty much on the wall that at least the first half of the coming year will be a difficult period for retailers both large and small. For better or worse, I’ll continue to keep you up to date on what you can do to make sure you come out the other end of this rough spot in one piece. Here’s wishing you a happy and prosperous new year – you deserve it!

The merchant had to let 9 employees go and close the shop. So how do you protect yourself?

1) Make sure your insurance covers both theft and business interruption.
2) Have a security consultant analyze your shop. How easy is it to break in to? Do you need additional alarms, security gates, etc.?
3) Assess how vulnerable you are to employee theft.

These are tough times, and with home and car burglaries also soaring don’t let your business falter by becoming a victim.

What steps are you taking right now to further protect your business?

The siblings who run the company make it a point to not take individual credit when sales are up or individual blame when sales are down. “We’ve all essentially got one voice and one vote. It’s important with us that no one has tried to push an individual agenda or individual authority…So we have a very flat structure and respect for what each other does,” the head honcho brother says.

That attitude seems to be working because even in Ireland’s down economy, their Avoca locations are doing quite well, with sales projected to equal or exceed last year’s take of 50 million euros. It’s hard to call the Avoca retail locales “stores” since they also include gourmet food, an artisan bakery, weaving mill, clothing, accessories, a design studio, cafe and gardening nurseries that are mostly set in large landscaped grounds. Like I said, eclectic.

But the siblings who run the outlets are rather eclectic as well. With no real boss to oversee things, it sounds like the business runs more on respect than on personal agendas. That’s something you can’t always do if you’re a sole proprietor. But instilling a team attitude with your associates or partners is well worth pursuing, especially in these crazy economic times. Read my headline and first sentence again. Maybe it’s time to think about how working together will prevent your retail efforts from falling apart.

They give away free glasses of freshly brewed tea, give a free ounce of bulk tea with each issue to monthly newsletter subscribers, give free tea tastings and give lots of relevant information on their website. Notice there are four instances of the word “give” in the previous sentence. That’s “give” as in “tithe,” the principle that “whatever you give away will eventually come back to you.”

Everything the duo does is designed to get another foot in the door. Even those who just come in for the free tea and don’t buy are certain to “give” the shop great word of mouth. I really like how co-owner David Edwards thinks: “A lot of [business] people get so wrapped up in the bottom line, they won’t take the risk and trust the customers to decide for themselves if they want to support the company.” Bingo!

What a great concept. He and his mom do what any successful retailer should –“give” customers something special with each shopping experience. If they like it, they’ll be back for more. If they don’t, they’ll let you know by either telling you or telling their friends. So it’s best to keep trying until you know you’re satisfying the majority.

The owners also are doing all the things a modern, tech-savvy retailer should. Their website has a blog with short, homemade videos about certain brands and products. The site also has information on the shop’s tea tastings and classes, complementary recipes, a Tea Handbook and an RSS feed for those who want automated updates. They’ve also created Facebook and MySpace pages to take advantage of social networking.

It seems like Edwards and his mom are doing just about everything right. And it shows on their bottom line: Revenues leaped from $60,000 their first year in business to $100,000 the second year. Read the article. Learn from their success. I say they’re doing a terrific job, with a capital “tea.”

Regardless of the merchandise you sell, it’s not a bad idea to offer shopping bags that help customers remember your store. You don’t have to spend a fortune; we list some very affordable bags on our site. Wherever you obtain them, add a logo or tag that makes your bags stand apart. Like the article says, they can become marketing tools that your customers use on your behalf. The article doesn’t say that bags also help with customer loyalty.

At our house, a few sturdy Crate & Barrel bags with handle grippers are always laying around, either for their originally intended use or for toting things from place to place. We’ll even take them back to the store when we know we’re going to buy something else. The bags of the yoga retailer mentioned in the article are the ones so popular that they end up on eBay. I like that the retailer urges customers to reuse them. They even urge staff at their stores to come up with ideas for encouraging this, like donating 50 cents to a local charity each time a customer reuses a bag.

Offering a great shopping bag doesn’t guarantee retail success. But by letting customers walk out the door with a handheld reminder of what you’re all about, the more likely you are to have success in the bag.

A design company is helping many Canadian big-box and smaller retailers undertake complete makeovers. They’re creating “an overall package of experiences that customers encounter when they’re trying to shop or buy or deal with using the product,” says a consultant quoted on Vancouver’s Business Edge.

Another consultant says retailers are trying to appeal to a customer’s sense of sight, sound, smell and touch. I love what he says about the merchandising mistakes some retailers make: “You want to invite customers to come and touch your product. I still come across stores where (a sign) says, ‘Don’t touch the merchandise,’ which is madness, unless you’re selling maybe very expensive wedding dresses.”

“Often, when people find stores and don’t want to go in, there’s a (sensory) clash. There’s a nice-looking Victorian kind of a store and it’s playing rap music. It’s amazing still how many times I’ve come across problems like that.”

Make sure you’re in tune with your customers’ senses. And keep your eyes open for research like the Canadians receive. Read it, study it, implement it and benefit!

This and other projects designed to entice retailers downtown was largely conceived by a storeowner who was frustrated by the city’s slow pace in redeveloping the district. She formed the Downtown Action Team, a coalition of merchants and businesses whose mission statement is “To creatively plan, manage and develop Downtown Albuquerque to become the best mid-sized Downtown in the USA.”

Quite an ambitious plan, and one that retailers of all sizes can look to for inspiration. Wherever your shop is located, there’s bound to be an association you can join that looks out for the best interests of your retail area. Chambers of commerce are good places to start. But groups like the Downtown Action Team, which focus solely on specific areas, might offer you more.

I’ve seen it work in San Diego, where the once-blighted Gaslamp Quarter downtown has become the place to go for shoppers, diners, party-goers and conventioneers. It took several years to complete the transformation, but the Gaslamp Quarter Association has done an amazing job. And the urban renewal continues in the adjacent East Village, where the new Petco Park ball field has spurred even more “fiercely fashionable” development, as Wikipedia puts it.

Bravo to the Albuquerque retailers for taking matters into their own hands. Think about rolling up your sleeves and doing the same.

First is this Canada.com story about a Montreal guy who knew he wanted to get into retail but wasn’t sure what to sell. When a friend showed him a carrying bag made of recycled materials, he knew he had found his niche. He opened a shop that only sells “upcycled” products — stuff made from other stuff — like handbags made from old soccer balls, picture frames from bicycle chains, and clocks from old records and cameras. Sure, this kind of stuff has been around forever, but usually not all in one place. “Pure rubbish” is what the headline calls it. To me it’s proof that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

If this retailer were in the United States, he’d have little trouble finding a place to open shop. According to this Wall Street Journal article on Baltimoresun.com, shopping malls all over the country are looking for tenants. Rents in new lease signings are 10.4 percent lower on average than the asking price, down from the 9.3 percent discount of two years ago, says a market researcher quoted in the article. In other words, it’s a buyer’s market, an especially good time to get into retail if you can pull the money together. Cheaper rents, shorter lease terms and bigger allowances from landlords if you outfit their stores are also compelling reasons to jump in.

Opportunities for retailers are popping up even in places like Omaha, Nebraska, where a former horse racetrack is being developed into a planned urban community. This story on TMCnet.com discusses the kinds of businesses the developers are looking for: Retail stores, restaurants, entertainment and hotels will be needed to service the growing community. They probably could use an upcycling shop as well.

Keep your eyes open for opportunities like these. If you can get in on the ground floor (literally or figuratively), you’ll be in a great position when the economy finally rebounds.

Robot Galaxy is exactly what its name implies: a retail universe stocked with the individual parts or kits to assemble a walking, talking toy robot. They’re sure more interesting-looking than the toy robots I grew up with in the ’50s. Back then, who’d have thought there’d be entire stores devoted to the little mechanical men?

An article earlier this year on Playthings.com covers how frustrated father Oliver Mitchell and retail veteran Ken Pilot came up with the concept. They now have one store in New York and another in New Jersey, and just got a $5 million funding boost for expansion.

I really like the interior photo in Playthings. It’s a clean, open design, with lots of white shelves and cabinets. The high, arched ceiling evokes a spaceship feeling, with open circles in the curved beams. High-up wall graphics of the planets carry the feeling through to infinity and beyond (sorry, Buzz Lightyear). The shelves are stocked with all the components needed to build a ’bot as simple or as fancy as its creator desires. Like RIDEMAKERZ and Build-a-Bear, the stores let you host in-store parties where all the guests custom-build their own robotic companion.

Great concept, great execution and great website. If Robot Galaxy ever opens a store near me, I know where I’m going to hold our next company retreat.