Month: February 2019

How to Set up a Retail Bird Department or Shop

Establishing a top-notch pet bird department isnt difficult, but it does require a commitment to providing customers with exceptional service, knowledge and products. Sales are built on relationships, so it is imperative to develop excellent communication skills both in the store and in following up with customers and prospects. Each employee should be trained in product knowledge and sales techniques to represent your business and effectively maintain customer relationships. Wylds Wingdom has developed guidelines for getting a great bird department off the ground and maintaining strong repeat business.

A Strong Beginning

The greeting your customer receives is one of the most important parts of the retail experience. Whether taking a call from a prospective customer or greeting a walk-in, it is important to give an upbeat and welcoming greeting. “Good morning! Welcome to (or thank you for calling) store name” followed by “How can I help you today?” Asking a walk-in customer “Can I help you?” gives them the opportunity to say, “No, thanks” or “Im just browsing.” Asking how you can help or what the customer is looking for requires an answer that opens the door to conversation and allows you to begin interacting with the customer.

You can also ask a walk-in customer if theyve ever been in your store before. If they say “yes” you can welcome them back, which makes them feel valued and reminds them that theyve done business with you before. If they say “no” you can tell them a little bit about how the store is set up and give a little information about yourself, and then ask what theyre looking for.
The timing of the greeting is also important. Greet customers immediately so that they feel welcomed and know you are there to answer questions and give advice. Many customers who walk out of a store without buying do so because they feel ignored or like there is no one available to help them. Deliver your greetings with sincerity and warmth and make an effort to get to know the needs of repeat customers and you will see a big difference in customer response.

Keep the Conversation Going

As a retailer you are a problem-solver for your customers. You provide the solutions to their needs by supplying them with the products theyve been looking for. Thats great if they actually know what they are looking for and what they need. As a retailer of pet bird supplies, you have a huge bank of knowledge to draw from, to provide customers with the information needed to make more purchases. You know about new products, new discoveries in the world of avian health, food and equipment. You are the expert!

As a retailer, you should feel good about sharing your expertise, giving your customers the knowledge and products needed to give their birds what they need for a healthy, happy life. The best way to begin with customers is to engage in conversation. Asking the right questions is the most effective way to assist your customers and increase sales. Find out what they are looking for, and then ask why they want that particular product. This opens the door for the customer to talk more about their situation, their particular bird, and that birds needs. Pet bird owners generally enjoy talking about their pet, and your questions about species, housing, diet, activities and habits will provide you with valuable information. This is a great opportunity for you to use your unique avian knowledge and recommend the specific item that best suits their need, as well as additional products that might work well for the customer.

Once you build rapport with the customer and are able to make effective recommendations, you increase the chances of future purchases as well as referrals to other bird owners.

Staying in Touch Using Social Media & Email Marketing

The opportunity to interact with customers doesnt end when they leave the store. Establishing successful customer relationships requires frequent “touches”. Once you have the interest of a customer or a prospective customer, its important to stay in touch with them, reminding them of your business and what makes it special. This is especially effective in retail businesses where you provide customers with products they buy over and over again, such as pet food and supplies.

Email marketing and social media are two effective ways of staying in touch with a high volume of prospects and customers while maintaining a personalized feel to the interactions. In order to stay in touch via email marketing, youve got to be sure to capture email addresses. If your checkout system is run by computer, make asking for an email address a part of the check-out process in the store. Alternatively, you can keep a stack of information cards near the register and ask customers if theyd like to fill one out and join your email list. Make this question a part of your phone script for prospective customers as well. Let them know that you carry a wide range of products and would like to let them know when you are offering specials or have exciting, new products available.

Establishing a Facebook page and Twitter feed is a great way to let customers and bird fanciers know whats happening in your world. You can build credibility, establish yourself as an expert, highlight new or popular products, and offer followers special deals. For those in your email database, providing a clickable link to your Facebook and Twitter pages in your email updates and asking recipients to “like” or follow your business is an effective way to build followers. Provide in-store customers with a card that gives your Facebook, Twitter and webpage addresses, or have it print on every receipt. Ask followers to recommend your pages to their friends, and spread the word through your local Avian club or other community groups.

Social media has become a necessity in todays business world. Unlike traditional advertising, social media brings a personal edge to your marketing. Through social media, you become more than just a name to your audience; you become a person with whom they can interact. You can engage with your customers and not only brand your business, but build a sense of trust and credibility. When you communicate with your social media audience, you are not only communicating with your followers or fans, but also with your followers followers. The fact that someone “likes” or follows you is seen as an endorsement to their connections, allowing you to reach a whole new audience.

In addition to these benefits, social media will help you get a pulse on what your customers want. Social media makes it easy for customers to comment and give feedback, allowing you to see what it is that they like, dont like, want and dont want. You can use this information to better your service, your products, and in turn, your business.

The Latest in Social Media Trends

A sure sign of the role social media is taking in marketing is the recent launch of Google Plus for businesses. Similar to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites, Google Plus offers the advantages of communicating with your customers on a more personal level, getting to know their preferences, and getting a personal endorsement from them. Google Plus has the added advantage of the “+1” button, which takes this endorsement to a new level. Google Plus melds together social media, its email system (gmail), AND its search engine so your business gets exposure, not only through your followers, but also through your email contacts AND anyone who sees your website come up in a Google search.
If your website is properly encoded for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes and someone does a Google search using your keywords, your website could pop up and that person could see your Google Plus page and “+1” it, endorsing it to all of their followers and friends as well as Google itself. Google states, “+1s” from friends and contacts can be a useful signal to Google when determining the relevance of your page to a users query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a pages relevance and ranking.”
What this means is that Google itself is saying that having and using a Google Plus page will help increase your ranking on search engines. While Google Plus is going to be the major contributor to SEO, interacting on all of the different social media sites will benefit your SEO. The algorithms for SEO ranking are changing and are including more and more of the social media postings, so if you want a higher search engine ranking, you will need to establish an active social media presence.

Training Your Bird Department Associates

Giving your bird department staff the best tools for dealing with a wide range of customers and situations is an effective way to keep customers coming back and reduce staff turnover. Confident, well-trained employees will appreciate their work environment and pass on their positive feelings to customers.

Its a good idea to develop an employee handbook that outlines policies and procedures. An employee handbook can address rules, expectations, and the ways in which employees should represent your business and brand. This is the first step in developing effective retail associates who are reliable and responsible.

Developing a training program can save time down the road when bringing new employees on board. Take the time to create your training protocol once, and each new employee will receive the same consistent information on store basics such as opening and closing procedures, cleaning and pet bird care, handling sales and returns, stocking and inventory, and the customer interaction techniques outlined in the previous sections. The manual can cover greetings, collecting information, assisting customers through conversation, etc.

Product knowledge and general bird care knowledge are other areas that will require training for your bird department associates. If you have birds in your store or department, your employees should be trained on the basic information about the species you carry. Customers will look to sales associates as the “experts”, so they should be able to answer questions and provide information about various bird species.

Encourage employees to familiarize themselves with inventory, and make educational resources on bird species and care available. Holding regular meetings or training sessions before or after hours will give you an opportunity to go over popular products and how they can be introduced and explained to customers. Role playing is another effective way to work through product knowledge and how staff can effectively listen to customers and direct them to the products they need. Regular meetings will also keep everyone up-to-date on new products, new displays and promotions, and industry news.

Consistent mentoring and training of employees can often give staff a sense of ownership and accountability, which ultimately adds to your stores success.

Certain principles of life and business never change. Like with the law of gravity, for example, its just plain better to know how it works even if youre not sure why.

I was reminded of this last week when the mens fashion clothing trade magazine Daily News Record (DNR) ran a story (Retail Graveyard, October 29) about a guy named Peter Divietro in Sloatsburg, N.Y., who annually for Halloween decorates his front yard with tombstones to commemorate dead retail stores.

That in turn reminded me of a failed chain of hip-hop clothing stores in Chicago called The Lark. Do you remember The Lark?

The owner was Lenny Rothschild. I met him on a sales visit at his suburban Chicago office one summer day in 2003 while my company was still making Black Fives throwback jerseys for wholesale distribution to stores. The Lark was an important account because it commanded the urban fashion retail market in Chicago.

FLYING HIGH; WITH AN UPSCALE APPROACH TO MERCHANDISING AND CUSTOMER SERVICE, THE LARK SOARS IN CHICAGOS URBAN MARKET, read a headline in DNR earlier that year. As Lenny Rothschild pilots his silver Mercedes-Benz coupe around Chicago, his love for the city is obvious, is how that article began (DNR, February 10, 2003).

If you wanted your goods in Chicago, you had to sell Lenny. All the biggest streetwear brands loved him, and Lenny was the gatekeeper who could make or break small, upcoming apparel brands like Black Fives. And he knew it.

Lenny was smart, and he wanted people to know it. His Harvard diploma hung prominently on the wall. Lenny delighted in explaining how to introduce new merchandise to coincide with welfare check and tax refund arrival dates, to maximize sales to his most faithful customer base, low-income inner-city residents. His stores were concentrated in those areas.

I showed and pitched my unique, attractive, high-quality, economically priced jerseys and matching fitted hats. Lenny looked them over and shrugged, and asked me how I expected anyone to know about the history of these Black Fives teams and players. I showed him some big press clippings and also explained that each jersey comes with its own informative hang tag, reminiscent of a collectible vintage basketball card, with images on one side and history text on the other. I handed him one of the cards.

This wont matter because black kids dont read, said Lenny.

Today, when I think of the immutable principles that work in life and in business, I think of two of them that applied to Lenny that day. One is that how you do anything is how you do everything. The other is that what you focus on expands. The trick is that these principles work the same whether in the negative or in the positive realm.

Lenny gave me an $8,000 order that afternoon. I shipped it, but what he didnt realize is that his loyal customers had already begun a quiet revolt. Instead of buying $300 retro jerseys like the kind The Lark was selling, his clientele had flipped the script, now buying plain white tee shirts to make the same fashion statement at three for $10. It was the revenge of the lowly urban consumer. It happened across the country. It was swift and it was bloody. Many urban retailers didnt make it.

Within two weeks, Lenny returned his Black Fives order unopened.

Whenever I shopped at The Lark, customer service didnt exist. Young African American employees were distant and resentful, usually the sign of low wages, cheap thinking, and lack of appreciation by management.

Not to pick on Lenny, because he wasnt alone in this approach to the so-called loyal inner-city consumer, but didnt you have that experience too, nearly everywhere you shopped?

By 2005, The Lark lay buried in the retail graveyard. AFTER THE LARK: MORE HIP, NO HOP; CLOSING HIS HIP-HOP APPAREL CHAIN, RETAILER OPENS ESSEX5, DEVOTED TO PREMIUM DENIM, SPORTSWEAR, read the DNR headline this time. The Lark is grounded, the article began. Lenny Rothschild has closed all 10 of The Lark stores he owned and operated, making the once-high-flying hip-hop apparel specialty chain a thing of the past (DNR, December 19, 2005).

What Ill always remember about The Lark are Lenny Rothschilds famous (last) words: black kids dont read.

The principles of life and business always work the same. Beliefs do become reality. Thoughts lead to feelings lead to actions lead to results. This works both ways, in this case to the advantage of the consumer and to the dismay of the retailer. Lenny couldve avoided it all if there had been any books like T. Harv Ekers brilliant Secrets of the Millionaire Mind available for him to read at the time. But there werent. And he didnt.

Thus, the Larks tombstone might have the epitaph, Gee, I guess black kids read after all.

Was Lenny right? Or do all kids read less? Or is it only online reading they do? Or something else? Whats your opinion?

There are designer handbags for every occasion, and women know they are always at their best when they go to all types of designer handbags shopping trip. The possibilities are large and bright and fun, especially when style and created by Gucci or Prada, Fendi or Kate Spade. These designer handbags are not like any kind of designer handbags shopping you could do in a mall, but the online ordering system is best for them first.

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The size of handbags is really dependent on the preferences of each individual woman. There is a small woman, a handbag, oversized bear overwhelming. She had one wish, to select with respect to their size. The same applies to a woman when she is surfing the Department observes bag ladies. More style to complement the frame better. A night at the opera will require a more sophisticated choice in a purse, but to go to the movies.

Because people love to shop, retailers are always looking for ways to sell their products and services, especially when trying to gain a competitive edge. When you use customer friendly and innovative retail displays, you will win over your customers and generate more sales. One way to attract and keep loyal customers is to use professional and engaging retail store fixtures. To make your store fixtures appealing and interesting, below is a list of tips to making the most out of your retail store fixtures:

Learn about the Various Store Fixture Designs: When you know all of the various store fixtures available, you can better create a professional and compelling retail display. Full store fixture designs include storefront signs, flooring, lighting, and much more.

Retail Store Fixtures that Attract Today’s Consumers: Using out dated store fixtures will not attract the attention of today’s consumer. You need to use innovative and professional strategies to attract customers. Retail store fixtures should be modern, target consumer shopping habits, appealing, and professional, in order to maintain customer satisfaction. Consumer shopping habits are always changing so it is important to keep up with changing consumer trends.

Retail Displays and Fixtures that Target your Specific or Niche Market: it is important to use retail displays and store fixtures that attract your targeted customer. It is important that your display and fixtures meet and are compatible with your customer preferences and needs.

Create a Retail Floor Plan for Store Fixtures: It is helpful to draw up a floor plan so that you can be better able to create your own retail store fixture layout for your store. When you create a floor plan for your retail display system, you will not have to move things around.

Retail Display System Should Be Non Intrusive: It is important to arrange your display and fixtures in a way that encourages people to continue shopping. Make sure it is not in their way when they walk around the store and is not blocking other products. The customer should be able to easily navigate throughout the store and be able to reach any product. As well, it is important to be aware that an average person’s field of vision is 170 degrees so keep that in mind when arranging your display system.

Retail Display System Aesthetics: When you create your display with the store fixtures, make sure that your space is designed so that it is friendly and welcoming. As well, use engaging and compelling store fixtures. The overall dcor should be attractive, send a positive message, encourages curiosity, and have a positive psychological impact on the customer.

Many of the store fixtures are designed to showcase merchandise to its maximum appeal. You can create a distinct look for your store to attract your targeted customer base. Creative retail displays and retail store fixtures are a great way to win over your customers, sell more products, and generate more sales. When setting up your next retail display, look for innovative ways to making the most out of retail store fixtures.

When it comes to furnishing your house, unfinished furniture stores just may contain whatever you are searching for. Not that many people have taken a trip to such stores yet they hold a treasure trove of wonders. You will discover pieces with the potential to be beautiful furniture at half the cost you would spend in an upper class home furniture shop.

When it comes to choosing furniture your own preferences must be considered. But don’t forget the style of home you reside in matters too. You can find both modern and traditional pieces in unfinished furniture stores. Traditional pieces are best suited to period homes leaving the contemporary look for new apartments. You may find it easier to build up some traditional pieces instead of trying to combine the old and new styles.

On the subject of wooden furnishings you will probably want the piece to last for years. Choosing simple but stylish pieces will pay off since they won’t go out of style as quickly as other modern pieces.

You don’t need to make the pieces seem like new. Some people will get bare wood furniture with a view to distressing it to make it look much older. There is a process in creating a distressed furniture piece usually involving specking, dry brushing and stenciling if the furniture isn’t too big. Not everyone likes the distressed finish but it can work very well in some homes.

Other people will buy furniture from the unfinished furniture stores and have it sanded and polished to look as if it was an aged piece. This is easier done with hardwoods such as Oak even though it is possible to make stunning pieces from pine as well. Always test your skills on an unnoticed piece first before you begin working on the part that everybody will see.

Find out more about unfinished furniture stores from an enthusiast who’s been working with bare wood furniture for more than ten years! Check us out at http://www.bare-wood-furniture.com/unfinished-furniture-store/