6/29/2015
Common Senses
Amanda Thomsen
I’m not a big shopper; my main retail therapy hub is a garden center (or eight). Malls usually frighten me and I get panicky, like a caged animal, at Costco. I manage to get nearly everything I need at Target, a good local grocery store that specializes in foods from around the world and, of course, I frequent every thrift store in the tristate area. Here’s what the places I frequent (or don’t) are doing to capture the attention of your senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste):
Costco is really all about taste. There’s a sample on every corner and there are “those people” that try to get enough to consider it lunch. Costco is known for having samples; they have made it “their thing.” How can you use taste in a garden center? Ask a customer to eat a leaf (um, not a poisonous one), offer samples of sun tea brewed from herbs you offer for sale, have a Bloody Mary bar as a Sunday event with Lovage stir sticks, see Lovage sales soar up 40,000%. Offer cheap-o cookies to every kid that comes in. Make giving kids a lollipop “your thing.”
Target has displays hanging from the ceiling, right when you enter, that are really impactful. Other than that, they just do merchandised end caps and they keep it simple. I see so many garden centers that do less, but a strong display at the entrance is a BIG DEAL.
The Mall has conquered smells. Perfumes, Auntie Ann’s Pretzels and Yankee Candles in an enclosed space. I’m getting bristly just thinking about it. How can you use smell? Gosh, you’ve already figured that out. “Here, smell this gardenia” is How to Sell a Gardenia 101. I like to have customers smell monarda leaves, sporobolus blooms and fritillaria bulbs. Pointing out the good and the bad seems to sell, regardless!
Thrift stores aren’t known for inspiring with displays of merchandising, other than hanging the polyester wedding dresses along the ceiling and out of harm’s way. I imagine they don’t try due to quick turnover, but for a texture person like me, the thrift store is brain food. Vintage woolens next to old chenille robes, real silk kimonos and antique cotton velvets. Yum. Setting up a display of touchable plants of varying textures could create something very pleasing for people that dig the subtleties of composition (and kids!).
My grocery store doesn’t invoke one of the five senses as much as harnesses old school marketing principles. You have to walk through the whole store to get to the milk or the incredible Latvian rye bread. It makes me think that sometimes garden centers are playing it all wrong by placing the flashy stuff up front. Put it in back and have it lure them through everything else! Are your plants easy to pick up? I’m thinking of perennial grasses that I’ve picked up that have grown out of the bottom of their cans and the roots have attached themselves to half a cubic foot of gravel, so when you pick them up the gravel swings at you like a medieval torture device. You know exactly what I’m talking about.
Sound is tough for the IGC, aside from water features or pond displays (DO have those! DO plug them all in!). I’ve visited an IGC that had oldies piped in throughout the benches and it just seemed weird. Constant pages and requests for help/loading/etc. are part of the job, but is there a way we can add pleasant background noise as well? A hidden boombox playing bird sounds behind a bird attractant plant display? “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme” on a loop in the herb section?
And with that last one, I’m out.
GP
Amanda Thomsen is now a regular columnist in Green Profit magazine. You can find her funky, punky blog planted
at KissMyAster.co and you can follow her on Facebook and Twitter @KissMyAster.