Think it through: The five elements of creating effective jewellery store design and packaging

by emily_smibert | February 14, 2017 3:02 pm

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By Lisa Hutcheson

To stand out and stay competitive in a constantly evolving marketplace, your store design and packaging matters more now than ever before. Creating a powerful, memorable brand for your jewellery store starts with having a clearly defined strategy. The goal of that strategy is for every aspect of your store design to help you attract customers, drive sales, and create an irresistible customer experience.

Identify your ideal customer
Knowing exactly who your customers are is essential to making the right decisions for your business. Every generation has different desires, wants, and shopping habits— all of which your business plans must take into account.

Millennials are dramatically changing the retail landscape and they have very different expectations when it comes to their shopping experience. As a group, they are extremely technology driven and are looking for options other than just the brick-and-mortar store when considering a purchase. They go beyond the store to the website, an app, or an Instagram account to get the information they are looking for.

If millennials are your ideal customer, then social media and e-commerce will need to be part of your plan. If you’re serving different generations, you’ll want to carefully consider their needs in the same way, as expectations and shopping behaviours vary greatly between boomers, generation X, millennials, and generation Z.

Stand out from the pack
From Costco to Tiffany’s, and everything in between, when it comes to buying jewellery, the options are plentiful. Jewellery is no longer something requiring a trip to a specialty store.

So how does one stand out from the pack and attract their ideal customers?

First, you need to consider what type of brand you want to be in the market. As a brand, you can’t be everything to everyone and if you try you will end up with confused customers.

When looking at your position in the market, consider:

• Are you discount, high-end, or perhaps somewhere in the middle?
• Are you just about convenience or more about creating an entire experience?
• Is a lot of your business online or is the focus on the in-store shopping experience?
• Is your store about prestige, excellence, outstanding customer service, or something else entirely?

One client I worked with had told me the core thing setting them apart from competitors was the custom design work they did.

In that case, we created a space within the store that had a window looking into the shop where the goldsmiths worked and customers could see them. This is a great example of working with what you already have and putting a key differentiator prominently on display to engage customers in a new way.

Establish the customer experience
The idea of customer experience and how it is critical to the success of a business is nothing new. But for your jewellery store, customer experience can make or break your business.

In recent years, the Internet and social media have completely changed the customer experience. Now, marketing is everywhere, all the time, which means customers can be experiencing your brand in a multitude of ways, even if they are not in your store.

To design a solid customer experience, you need to put yourself in the customer’s place by deciding:

• How do you want customers to feel and what do you want them to experience while in the store?
• How do you want to sell? Is your approach to stand behind the showcases or do you have specific products and times you want the sales associate out on the floor beside the customer?
• How will you present products? How are these items going to be displayed?
• What do you add to enhance the customer experience?

An outstanding example of customer experience is Tiffany’s. If you’ve ever shopped in one of their stores you’ve seen the level of attention to detail. This creates a memorable customer experience that makes someone buying a $200 item feel as valued as someone buying a $20,000 one.

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Set specific sales targets

When you are a smaller retailer it can be easy to brush off the idea of sales targets. Isn’t the goal to just sell as much as possible?

Your sales are a major indicator of the health of your business and setting clear sales goals will help to determine your path ahead, even when it comes to the design of your store.

Once, I had a client tell me they wanted to grow their sales by a specific percentage and then go on to tell me all about the new store fixtures they wanted to use. The problem was their vision didn’t align with the plan for sales growth because the store they were describing simply would not have been able to accommodate that kind of growth.

It’s not just about the numbers. You need to look at the picture as a whole and consider things like layout, processes, and fixtures, and how they will support your sales goals in the long term.

Other considerations include security, customer flow, peak sales periods, and how the customer will move through your store from browsing, to selection, and to checkout.

Taking a holistic approach to setting your sales goals will ensure decisions you are making about your store design and packaging are in alignment with your end goals.

Packaging perfection
When it comes to jewellery, it’s no secret packaging matters. Packaging is part of the overall experience you are providing your customers and it cannot be overlooked. From the box to the tissue paper, to the bag and any extra little goodies that go along with it, your packaging needs to be distinctive, and on brand.

Packaging is a key opportunity to back up your customer experience. For example, if your ideal customer is environmentally conscious, having minimal packaging or using recycled materials may be seen as keeping on brand.

Ask anyone what the “little blue box” means to them and they will likely answer right away with Tiffany’s. They take the time to beautifully wrap everything that leaves their store, and include small add-ons, like pouches to store the jewellery. This not only creates a memorable experience for their clients, it also ensures the client will think of them whenever they open up the pouch.

Having a plan for your packaging means another opportunity to create brand recognition and loyalty, in addition to creating an extra special customer experience.

When it comes to appealing to your clients and seeing steady growth, each of these elements are critical to your future success and overall strategy. No matter how big or small your store may be, you need to have a well-defined strategy so you’re ready to adapt to your market, serve the needs of your ideal customers, and meet your business goals. 

Lisa Hutcheson is a retail consultant with a mission to help clients create a remarkable experience for their customers and extraordinary profits for their stakeholders. Her consulting practice provides clients with innovation and non-traditional retail strategy expertise as well as customer and employee engagement strategies. Hutcheson is also a frequent speaker on retail trends, customer experience, and best practice. She can be reached at lisa@lisahutcheson.ca[3].

 

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