I love this quote from Kosovo poet Dejan Stojanovic, in The Sun Watches the Sun: “A breeze, a forgotten summer, a smile, all can fit into a storefront window.”  If your shop attracts walk-by traffic, what is your window saying to those who pause to look at it?

We often feature merchandise in our window, as you would expect, but we also sometimes just evoke a mood, especially at the holidays.  Or we’ll help a local arts group promote a fundraising event, for example showing the creatively painted violins that will soon be raffled off by the Wisconsin Youth Orchestra.  There’s a big roadwork project starting next week on Monroe Street, so our window will have two cutouts of construction equipment with flags and banners welcoming Speedway Sand and Gravel.  Not that we’re looking forward to the road being torn up for ten months, but our window will convey the fact that we intend to make the best of it!

If you need some fresh ideas for upcoming windows, start by brainstorming with your employees.  Tell them what you want to promote during the coming months, and encourage them to pair up to take charge of a window display from start to finish.  You’ll want to discuss the important elements of good visual merchandising such as the use of color, symmetry, and other design principles.  Stress the importance of having enough of the merchandise chosen for the display to make a statement and to sell. Let them know what fixtures and signs are available. But be open to new ideas, so that you are not just asking the staff to carry out your concepts.  You can always ask to approve a sketch of the display before giving your go-ahead. 

We offer an hourly bonus for those doing window displays, and as an added incentive, we put a sign near our main window giving credit to the employees in charge.    We also record all window designs in a store photo album. Not only is this a great source of future ideas, but these pictures give us the opportunity to critique how successful we were in communicating to potential shoppers walking by.  The best feedback, however, is seeing how many look at the window and then walk in the door.

Happy Retailing,

Carol “Orange” Schroeder