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.

You’re not alone. Many first-time or expanding retailers are reluctant to invest substantially in store fixtures, so they settle for used, damaged or third-rate items. And unless they’re adept at dressing them up, their stores probably will have a third-rate look. That’s not what customers want to see as part of their shopping experience.

A better solution for many retailers is leasing – and not just your fixtures either! Just about any other retailing need can be leased, such as POS equipment, in-store surveillance and security systems, computer hardware, software, installations and consultation.

A vast number of American businesses lease at least one of their equipment acquisitions, and nearly all say they would lease again. Large and small retailers, multinational corporations, government agencies, religious and non-profit organizations are among the contented lessees worldwide.

Leasing provides many advantages over buying, including significant tax savings. Did you know that when shown as an operating expense, leased items can be 100% tax deductible? If you bought the same items by borrowing or on credit, you only can take depreciation over the useful life of the equipment. So if you’re looking for a tax break sooner rather than later, leasing may be the way to go.

You can also get your lease approved faster than any other method except buying by cash. Many leases can be approved within two days, vs. several days to weeks for borrowing and credit. Your interest rate will most certainly be fixed, so you’ll always know where the lease stands vs. borrowing or credit, where the rates can fluctuate depending on market conditions.

Down payments for leases typically require just one or two upfront payments, which are applied to your balance. If you’re borrowing or leasing on credit, you’ll usually need to come up with a down payment of 10% to 20% of the total amount. And you probably won’t need to provide a financial statement for lease transactions of less than $150,000. When borrowing or leasing on credit, you’ll usually need to show financials regardless of the amount requested.

And don’t forget, you can either buy or renegotiate the continued lease of the equipment when the lease is up. It all depends on the lease structure. In this tight economy, lessors are more open to negotiating with you so they can keep inventory moving through the pipeline. So put on your bargaining hat before you enter into any leasing agreement.

Retailers can lease equipment in a variety of ways, including finance or capital leases and sales leasebacks. Take a look at this table to get an idea of what might work best for your business. Be sure to consult with your financial advisor to determine the most tax-beneficial lease for your company. And discuss any potential lease with your legal advisor before you sign on the dotted line.

If you’re still a bit nervous about leasing, consider trying it out on just a few items. If it’s a positive experience, crunch the numbers on leasing additional equipment or services. You’ll probably find that leasing is always worth considering vs. buying. And to repeat a cliché that applies to our current economy, you need all the competitive advantages you can get. Leasing just might be that advantage.

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.

According to the site, tailgaters are a lucrative market, with about 42% saying they spend more than $500 on food and supplies annually, and 46% saying they tailgate six to 10 times a season. Numbers like that convinced two Roanoke, Virginia, entrepreneurs to invest in a shopping mall cart to sell T-shirts, pennants and other fan gear for their state’s teams. The concept took and they were able to move into a larger temporary store during the holiday shopping season, this article on Roanoke.com says.

The owners of Tailgaters United are in an even larger store now. It’s a part-time labor of love because both still work full time for large national retailers. They want to expand by offering high school gear as well.

This is another example of how people with retail in their blood figured out a way to create a niche business involving their passion. If you’ve a burning desire to enter the trade, consider starting small at a cart. My niece, who worked off and on for years as a barista, learned that the municipal library in her town wanted to subsidize a coffee and pastry cart for patrons. Drawing on her experience, she submitted a proposal and earned the contract. Now she’s putting all that good experience to great use and learning more than ever about how to run a retail business.

What’s your passion? Whether you find it at a tailgate party or a in a coffee cart, there are plenty of possibilities out there for you to take the ball and run with it. And hopefully, like my niece, run it in the black.

I blog often about the need for employees to guarantee a positive shopping experience for every customer — even those who are “just browsing” and leave your store empty-handed. Whether you own a single store or a chain, customer service is a big part of your brand. It’s so important to Zappos that they call it “people planning.” “Each employee needs to be a great point of contact with customers,” the company’s creative director says. “We invest the time and money into hiring and nurturing the right people, as many other companies do in their media planning.”

Companies like Zappos even go so far as to measure return on investment for each employee. That’s probably out of reach for most smaller retailers, but you certainly can find out what customers think of your customer service. As I’ve said before, sites like Survey Monkey.com make it easy to poll your client base online. You can reward them for participating by emailing them special discount coupons and other promotional material.

But don’t forget to reward those employees who do an outstanding job. It can be as simple as treating them to pizza or as extensive as award top-selling performers with spa treatments and other spiffs. Work with retailers in your area to cross-promote your stores and, subsequently, your brand.

Treat your customers right. Treat your employees right for treating your customers right. Zappos knows it works. So if the shoe fits for them, you should wear it too.

That was 20 years ago. Now her business has grown to the point where she plans to open a retail store soon. Presumably, it will carry not only the diaper covers, but also the bibs she devised from the same material as the covers. Liberman already has licensing deals with the Dr. Seuss brand and is a vendor to major marketers including Babies ‘R’ Us, Costco.com, Amazon.com and Target.com. Her Bumkins website is in soft pastel blues and pinks, which certainly appeal to the mothers who visit the site to buy Liberman’s many baby products.

Then there’s Steve Goldberg and Janet McCulley, founders of the Muttropolis chain of pet supply stores. As the name implies, Muttropolis is a mecca for dog and cat owners. I’ve visited the Solana Beach, California, store several times over the years. I’m always amazed at the variety of canine/feline products and how creatively they’re merchandised. The stores are full of visual puns about pets, as is the website.

Goldberg and McCulley, of course, love their pets. But they couldn’t find a store that carried all the unique dog and cat items they craved. These include premium organic and gourmet treats, bedding, canine “couture,” bowls, carriers, a special shedding blade for dogs, and Halloween costumes for pets–the kind of things they couldn’t find at Petco or PetSmart. So they opened the first Muttropolis in 2002. They seem to have filled a niche, and have expanded to four more stores. Sales-wise, they’re doing very well in this economy that’s going to the dogs.

Butts and mutts. Two retail opportunities that some smart, passionate people have turned into retail careers. What’s your passion? If it’s not on your store’s shelves, maybe it should be.

According to this article on Boston.com, going upscale in one terminal’s food court at Logan International Airport paid off handsomely for the Massachusetts Port Authority. It hired the retail design arm of retail shopping mall giant Westfield to handle the upgrade. Westfield got seven tenant restaurants “to splurge on expensive countertops and eye-catching architecture…to pique passengers’ curiosity so they’ll check out the concessions — and then stand in the checkout lines.”

The result? Even though passenger traffic is declining, concession sales are increasing at the terminal’s renovated food court. The warm, inviting colors and trendy design seem to help calm frenzied travelers. If they’re more relaxed, they’re more likely to spend money on food while killing time between flights.

The next time you’re in an airport waiting area, take a good look at the retail environment. Think about which storefronts and restaurants grab your attention. Then think about how you can apply their design principles to your own store. Interesting to think that waiting at the terminal gates can help your design imagination take flight.

Fortunately, the CEO is a forward-thinking guy who realizes the importance of good retail store design. .“We think (the old design) kind of overstayed its welcome a bit,” he says in this article in Convenience Store Decisions. “Our challenge is to go in and rebrand all our stores.”

He’s doing it the right way, too: over time. Upgrades to infrastructure, HVAC and store systems were done in 2005-06, and a prototype store was unveiled near Buffalo last year. It’s a place where ideas are tested to see what works for customers and staff. Products and merchandising also are tried out. The foodservice manager wants the new stores to suit the needs company’s needs not just today, but well into the future.

“We know customers don’t spend but five minutes in our stores,” the VP of sales and marketing says. “We don’t want to extend that if that’s all they want to stay. We want to make their shopping experience as pleasant and efficient as we can.”

Other things the chain has going for it: a history of community involvement, an easy-to-navigate website, and a practice of hiring local store associates as well as corporate executives.

You can learn a lot by following the example of retail chains like Wilson Farms. Always think about the future. Hire locally when possible. Get involved in the community. Those are just a few of the keys to success in this business. Use them to develop your own prototype store, even if it’s just on paper.

He certainly was selling us the sizzle instead of the steak. I could tell by his urgent expression that he really wanted to close the deal right away and move on to the next customer in dire need of an upgrade. In the end, we opted to upgrade for a “special prorated upgrade fee today only” because he made it sound like a good idea.

I left feeling good about the decision to upgrade, but I also felt kind of like I needed to take a shower. It was the same feeling I had in a car salesman’s cramped cubicle when three burly guys tried to get us to sign on the dotted line before we left the dealership.

Thinking back on the experience, I was surprised that Costco would employ high-pressure tactics on customers at their most vulnerable spot in the shopping experience: the POS. While it makes perfect business sense to capture the customer data at the POS and offer the upgrade at that time, it all struck me as a little creepy. The fact that the odd-looking handheld device was receiving my personal profile wirelessly made me somewhat uncomfortable, given the huge number of identity thefts from retailer databases reported on recently.

I would have preferred that the cashier briefly alert me about the upgrade offer, and then tell me it could be paid for immediately. If I needed more info, there should have been brochures or fliers describing the offer at the POS.

I’m not about to stop shopping Costco over this. But it certainly degraded the shopping experience for me. I know it’s tempting for retailers of all sizes to present special offers at the POS. But I say make them soft-sell and with a smile on your face, not an in-your-face attitude like the guy I encountered at Costco. Maybe he’s a former car salesman?