A Street Full of Windows of Opportunity

I've always believed that if you're going to do something then you might as well be as good at that something as you possibly can be.  At one end of the achievement spectrum is being the best in town and at the other end is being the best in the world.  It frustrates me to see sections of retailers in a street settling for a space behind a glass wall and then sitting back watching the business walk on by.  I think this frustrates me mostly because of the opportunity lost for the rest of the street and the rest of the town.

We've recently appointed two Team Leaders at our Masterton and Martinborough i-SITE Visitor Centres.  These are retail outlets selling any travel product in New Zealand to visitors and locals.  To get our Team Leaders thinking about their own retail displays, I took them for a walk down Masterton's main retail shopping street.

During our walk we looked at:

• what we liked and didn't like
• what worked and didn't work
• our reactions in different types of shops
• how front window displays flowed and connected into the rest of the shop

No matter which retailer we looked at the experience all started with the shop window.  This was:

• the opportunity to capture our attention
• the opportunity to encourage us to stop and look
• the opportunity to capture our imaginations
• the opportunity to say come on in

These retail windows truly are windows of opportunity.  What's more there's a whole street full of windows of opportunity.

What we liked:

• clean, crisp, bright displays of something topical or seasonal
• displays with a bit of story behind them
• posters or backing colours set back from the window and a small relevant display in front

What we didn't like:

• windows used as a store room
• windows that tried to display everything the store sells
• posters on windows that stopped us looking in
• irrelevant displays with no meaning or support for the rest of the display
• handmade signs

Connecting the window to the in-store experience:

• the product in the window then has a display of the product right in front of you as you walk into the store.  'This is where you buy what you've just seen'.

Could a small town strip of retailers set themselves a goal of being the best retail window displays in the country?

• none of what we saw was rocket science
• none of what we saw cost a great deal of money
• it would just take the energy and willingness to change from key retailers
• there would be a critical mass and eventual tipping point at some stage

The benefits would be enormous in just trying to achieve the goal:

• renewed time, effort and energy put into the business
• better window displays would encourage more traffic into the store
• more traffic, more sales - although that's a whole session on its own
• if you're mildly successful the public will get behind the campaign
• if you're moderately successful there will be media opportunities
• media stories will bring visitors to see for themselves
• better displays as retailers challenge themselves with continuous improvement
• and so it goes...

Suddenly that street is no longer a collection of retailers but a whole experience.

I made another observation while I was walking down the street with our two Team Leaders.  We'd stopped out the front of a store discussing the merits of the display before us.  We stood there for some time looking deeper and deeper into the store.  I'm not sure if it was the extended time we spent in front of the store (extended from what they were used to from passers-by) or that we were obviously pointing and talking about the store, but we captured the employees' attention.  Standing at the secure back of the store and the reassuring glass wall between us, the employees started talking and looking back at us.  I can only imagine the relief on their face when we finally moved on.  What a different story this would have been if they'd just come out onto the street to talk to us.


David Hancock is general manager of Destination Wairarapa, the regional tourism organisation for Wairarapa, New Zealand and would be delighted to receive comments on this or any other topic.
http://www.wairarapanz.com