Thursday, March 22, 2018

Tips for Clothing Boutique Store Design and Layout

 

Are you ready to turn your dream into a reality? You’ve worked so hard researching and developing your Boutique’s business plan and have decided to open your first brick-and-mortar location! You’ve leased the perfect space, secured your licenses and are ready to get started! Now it’s the fun part- time to decorate! But don’t start laying those handmade floor tiles and white washing those wood ceilings just yet, as there are many important behind-the-scenes steps to take first that directly impacts the overall success of your boutique. There’s always a "method to madness" when it comes to retail and, as there are many components involved in a store's development process, majority of them take place backstage. Before you get started, it helps to clear your mind so you can truly focus on conquering each step in the process. To help put things in perspective, clear your mind and go shopping. You read it right- go shopping! (You like these tips already I can tell.) Your goal here is to be a customer and note your natural reactions throughout your experience. This activity is to understand the impact of perceived value through the customers’ eyes and ultimately develop a mindset focused on customer perspective.

As a customer, you walk in a cute little store, shop around maybe try on and purchase… Now let’s rewind. Why that store? Did you hear about it from a friend or thought it just looked cute on the outside? Was it that amazing two-piece ensemble in the window or something else entirely? Ok, you just happened upon it shopping at your local mall and figured you’d walk in and check it out. That’s fair. Now once you walked in, where did you go first? What immediately drew you in? Was it overwhelming, cluttered or confusing to look around due to a random assortment or was it organized and easy to understand the store concept? Did the space feel too open and empty with employees just waiting to attack or did the space feel like an exciting maze where you could explore different fashion worlds as you moved along? Don't use this experience to critique another store; use this experience as a tool to improve your design process. Did you spend a lot of time shopping a certain area? What was so enticing about it? Was it a visual display highlighting a new trend or a creative mix of outfit ideas? What you noticed as a customer is what can prioritize in your design. Spending an unreasonable amount of time on wall hooks in the fitting room? Did you even notice the other store's hooks? Probably not. Neither will your customer. See? Now you can spend time on the important parts of this process.

Using your newfound "customer perspective mindset", you will be able to prioritize and make decisions more efficiently throughout every step of the design process. You want to do things right the first time to the best of your ability, give yourself room to make adjustments and naturally evolve over time, and focus your time and budget on what will ultimately yield a return on investment. Everything from your product assortment to your design elements should reflect your store concept so customers can see, hear, think, feel and ultimately understand your brand. But as excited as you are about your custom tile floor and entire store design makeover, your end goal is to sell your product. Developing a multi-functional store design that drives customers from entry to check out is a multi-tiered pyramid strategy we’re going to conquer in this article. Did you realize that when you walk into a store the direction you go was already predetermined? That's right…and no it's not "big brother". There are strategic methods used when creating a store's layout to ensure your customer's shopping experience fully encompasses the different stories taking place. Constructing a strategic layout, creating awe-inspiring merchandising and incorporating creative visual design elements is key in setting up your boutique for success.

Get your pencils and measuring tapes ready!

Let’s start with the bare bones of your space. Some spaces require full-on gutting and others just need a little face-lift; whether you are starting from scratch or working with what you already have, you'll first need to setup your store's physical structure and floor layout starting with your floor anchors. Floor anchors are the fundamental hubs your boutique that help guide customers through the shopping process. Point(s) of entry, fitting rooms and cash wrap are high-traffic areas usually spaced apart from each other that essentially "hold down the fort" in your space. Some boutiques can have more depending on their store size and product offerings. Use these anchors as a guideline for setting up sitting areas, tables/fixtures, and other display areas to fulfill the customer's needs as they are shopping around the store. It's not only about the customers shopping but also whose accompanying them. Your goal is to form a strategic layout easy to maneuver that keeps customers in your store as long as possible. Getting customers to invest their time in your boutique is very important, so striving to make their experience worth it will make all the difference.

A super handy way to visually plan your boutique’s layout is by creating a floor map. Much like a blueprint, a floor map is a two-dimensional way to conceptualize your floor layout on a smaller scale before you start construction. Now there are many types of computer software, apps and websites available these days that you can use for developing your plan; however, there's no need to get too technical here. Floor mapping is just a tool for planning purposes and as long as your plan is relative in scale, nothing technically precise is required. In the long run, developing a floor map on the computer is beneficial, but drawing by hand is quick and easy so ultimately it's up to you. Create a map of your space perimeter and any permanent interior components, such as building support columns, dividing walls, etc. and secure the placement of your floor anchors via basic shapes. If you are using a computer, SAVE this document, as you will save yourself future legwork by keeping a blank copy of your floor map. Go ahead and print a copy so you can determine your floor fixture layouts with pencil. For your floor map, you want to establish the placement of sitting areas, floor fixtures, including tables, racks, and accessory build-outs, and any other constructional design elements in relation to your wall components to generate a strategic flow through your store. No matter how large or small your space, you want to “divide” your store into little areas that will each encompass a different story or concept. This creates visual interest and encourages a customer to move throughout the store to fully see what all you have to offer, rather than walking in and getting a gist of what’s available and walk out. Now you can move racks and furniture to your hearts desire, actually I encourage you to actively observe and adapt to customer’s behavior, but for now you want to generally set up these areas so you can move forward with the permanent stuff.

Source: Pinterest

Source: Pinterest 

Lighting is also a vital component to your space, as it's a part of both the constructional and decorative parts of your store's development plan. Your space will mostly likely consist of a combination of commercial lighting ceiling fixtures. Lighting can be a bit tricky, as we've all been through the "this looked totally different on me in the store" debacle before. You want to ensure your product looks just as appealing on the hanger as it does on your customers. We aren't trying to manipulate the lighting to trick customers into buying something that looks totally different at home; lighting in a commercial space is usually white fluorescent light, whereas residential spaces are warmer. So if you have to work with fluorescent lighting, try using bulbs that emit warmer light or a mix of both. Track lighting is the most ideal boutique lighting, as you have the ability to highlight specific areas of your store that's not overpowering the space. It's very important your spot and floodlights are methodically placed for an evenly well-lit space that doesn't compete with the highlighted features. Decorative lighting from chandeliers to table lamps can help add another layer of ambiance once your store is ready to decorate.

You're well on your way to becoming the new fashion boutique hotspot in town! Now it's time to show your customers how your boutique is different from all the others out there! Start by coming up with an innovative, refined interior-decorating plan that aligns with your overall brand image and selection of product you're offering. If you're inventory consists of designer goods, it makes sense your store's aesthetic should match this higher price point level. Your target customer expects a refined, luxe atmosphere special to its select clientele and product. Whatever your boutique's brand style, really strive to come up with a unique design that no other store has. What sets you apart from the rest raises your potential for success. You can quickly get carried away and caught up in the details, so remember at the end of the day your store design should act as a blank canvas of such to highlight your product. Pinterest is a great source for design inspiration with everything from color palettes to layers of lush décor. Finalize your wall design including fixtures and paint color, execute any floor or ceiling construction and coordinate placement and design of floor anchors.

Depending on your product range, you will need to determine how you want your product displayed in the store. You have a lot of opportunity here to be creative and unique, plus you have the ability to try new ideas over time; however, your product needs to be organized and arranged in a way that is reflective of your overall store concept. What is your moneymaker? What products are you investing the most money in? Those products should be the focal point of your store and featured throughout in a purposeful way. If you want to sell a vast range of product, it all needs to make sense in the space. A hodge podge of random stuff together looks cluttered and doesn’t portray a meaningful story. It’s confusing to the customer and takes value away from your star product. If you want to offer clothing, accessories and gift items, make sure these products make sense for your target customer and your store design. If your boutique is focused on trendy outfits, jewelry and a unique line of candles, customers don't expect to come in and find A-Z initialed coffee mugs or bejeweled trinkets. Don’t get carried away and stay focused! Creating specific display areas for the hard goods and accessories helps organize your space and enhances your customer's shopping experience. Little shoppable destinations to visit around the store are not only visually appealing but a strategic way to keep customers in your store longer.

Bring on the fashion!

Visual merchandising is essentially a realm of guidelines or set of principles all clothing boutique owners should get to know and learn to live by. Creating visual interest and generating perceived value isn't always such an easy thing to do. Just like buying product, you can't buy solely off what you like, it's what your customers will like as well as what's currently popular or influential in today's society. From your boutique's decoration to placement of product, everything has to be done so in just a way that ultimately draws customers in to shop, encourages them to stay a while and try on your product, and hopefully make a purchase. With a saturated market and competition of boutiques trying to stand out amongst each other, everything comes down to visual merchandising. When you are buying clothing from market, you'll quickly realize it's more than just snatching up the trendiest looks available. You'll want to balance your selection of trendy looks with everyday basics in both solids and prints to widen your customer base. Although your buying budget will determine how much, of what and particularly when to purchase product, you'll generally always need to buy an assortment of product that will produce aesthetically relative merchandising concepts. Basically, each of your walls, racks or wall/rack combos should reflect different merchandise styles, color schemes and product assortments so customers can continually discover something new as they adventure throughout your store. Customers rely on outfit inspiration because it helps them visualize what to put together and how the outfit would work for them. Nothing is more special for a customer than to be able to see themselves in our product inspired by the stories we're telling and outfits we're creating.

Let's begin merchandising our first concept in the front of your store. We want to highlight our trendiest looks to draw customers in through the front window. It's the month of March, so the current upcoming events customers are shopping for are spring break outfits, St. Patrick's day green, Easter dresses and new spring outfits in general. We should showcase outfits most relative to the season with customer's shopping needs in mind, as customers are nature of habit. We've invested the most in a spring color palette featuring floral prints, so let's combine all those elements together and start merchandising our first concept. For our merchandising story, this concept is for our chic and girl customers looking for classic spring pastels and outfits that could work for everyday or vacation. We will strategically put together outfits that could work for everyday or for upcoming spring break. We will also subtly highlight our mint dresses and tops to catch any St. Patrick's Day shopper's eye. A tip when it comes to merchandising is to allude to upcoming holidays and events through product placement and color, but wait until the week of to actually put together a holiday themed area.

This Pastel Babe Cold Shoulder Top from Lotus Boutique is going to be our inspiration piece for this concept. We will pull style aesthetics similar together, use a mixture of pieces to encourage a number of outfit options and keep a spring color story. Using all these colors together will start to become overwhelming; a great idea is to pull two colors from this palette, pair with neutrals, and mix in a couple of coordinating prints for an overall balanced color story. We can pair together white jeans and a solid purple top with a denim jacket or floral printed kimono for outfit options. Putting together a balanced mix of solids and prints that's grounded in neutrals, aligning product choice with your style aesthetic and pairing outfits together highlighting ways to incorporate this color into a customer's wardrobe are your overall goals here.

Design Elements more in depth:

  • Style aesthetic is your overall concept theme that's reflected through clothing type and outfit pairings in the same kind of style. One concept's style could be bohemian in which the clothing selection should have a boho look to them and the outfits should reflect different boho looks when put together. So pairing a run of vintage floral mini dresses, black linen overalls and crop tees together with distressed high waist black denim jeans, strappy bralettes, lace tanks and a kimono layered over as the outfit inspiration are all representative of your concept's theme or style aesthetic. Styles sometimes aren't so specific. For style examples, browse Lotus Boutique's Bohemian Style Collection, Chic Style Collection or select the Shop By Trend tab for other collection styles.
  • Color schemes are typically inspired buy a specific print or collection of prints in your clothing assortment. This is where you can let your creative juices flow! From Pinterest to magazines to the candy isle at the grocery store, there are many ways to come up with color arrangements that will inspire you and your customers just the same! You do want to be careful not to be too "matchy-matchy", but you also want the color scheme to make sense. Try to avoid holiday color schemes, such as red/white/blue or red/green/white, unless it's that time of year; otherwise, they just look out of place and uninspired. Balancing light and dark color schemes throughout the store is important as well so one area doesn't look too heavy over another. You want the flow of colors from one concept and color scheme to the next to be a natural transition that's appealing to the eye, so concepts next to each other should complement each other.
  • Product placement is a key component in merchandising, as everything is put in its place with a reason. Highlight your star product and make it the focal piece of your wall or rack by placing it on a faceout or dropdown bar. Outfitting, layering and overall outfit styling shows customers how to pair things together to create an amazing outfit. This is reason to pair coordinating outfit options together so your customer already knows how to get the look. Although merchandising techniques are widespread many companies have their own preferences, essentially you want to pair a selection of outerwear, tops and bottoms that can be mixed and matched or worn together along with rompers, dresses, etc. aesthetically similar. Only pair outfits together that can actually be worn together, otherwise, you're just adding product for color. If you have a selection of boho outfits perfect for festivals, fancy dresses for wedding season and a selection of active-wear, it wouldn’t make sense to put them all together! Designate a separate area for each concept to make them special, as it also creates different destinations for a customer to visit around the store.
  • Balance and composition are important merchandising principles to follow when it comes to arranging your product, as they visually generate a complete thought behind each merchandising concept. You want each wall display and floor rack to look organized and put together in a meaningful manner. For an impactful color arrangement, disperse your pops of color among neutrals using a 2:3 ratio. If you arrange product colors in a 1-2-3-4-5 order, the neutrals can go in 1, 3 and 5, and colors can go in 2 and 4, or vice versa. You can use this ratio to help disperse color with any number of product runs put together. Similarly, distributing the visual weight through product quantities helps generate proportion. Placing many items together with only a few sizes left makes your assortment look choppy and incomplete. Customers will see your rack as being "shopped" and with no other product to fill the space; they will quickly assume your store doesn't have much to offer. Providing a range of product types, such as dresses, bottoms and tops, should also be coordinated in an organized manner so the selection is evenly dispersed.

 Check out this video by Lotus Boutique for a merchandising tutorial:

Source: Youtube

Once your store is merchandised it's time to put the icing on the cake! Mannequins or dress forms are vital to the visual process, as they complete the look behind each merchandising concept and bring to life the many outfits that can be created from your collection. Mannies are a great way to showcase items that might not have great hanger appeal plus they can show the versatility of specific pieces. Show customers different ways to style an item by selecting a piece from one merchandising concept and changing the aesthetic on the mannie. For example, if you have a floral kimono in your chic and sophisticated concept, show how this kimono can be styled in a boho way by layering it over a crop top and cutoffs for a festival look on a mannie. Come up with creative looks customers wouldn't think to put together themselves! Be the fashion boutique setting all the trends in town!

Hopefully you're feeling confident and ready to tackle the design, layout and merchandising process in stage 2 of your boutique's development process. For more information about opening your boutique, click here for tips in developing a business plan, sourcing locations and more! Now go gather inspiration and start putting your store plan together. What an amazing accomplishment to design your own boutique from top to bottom... pat yourself on the back and get ready to succeed in style! 

 You got it girl! 

 



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