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BOUTIQUES FOR GARDEN CENTER GIFT SHOPS

Written by: Linda Cahan

Article Overview: This article explains how to create boutique areas within your store.

BOUTIQUES FOR GARDEN CENTER GIFT SHOPS

BOUTIQUES FOR GARDEN CENTER GIFT SHOPS

Boutiques are a retail concept that became popular in the early 70’s when Henri
Bendel in New York City became the place to be thanks to its “street of shops.” This
concept revolutionized department store merchandising by offering a way to showcase a
specific designer or merchandise concept in an intimate setting – while being part of a
huge store.
Boutiques are individual areas that are carved out of a larger space. They are
usually small areas that are decorated, signed and fixtured in a way that enhances their
merchandise selection.
This concept can be adapted perfectly to any type of store.
Look at your merchandise assortment. Along with all the practical items that are needed
for planting, you also have some fun stuff.
Hopefully! This fun stuff may include gift items, cards, vases, baskets, decorative items,
sets of gardening tools, straw hats, gloves – all the accessories that are perfect for the
home gardener. These specialty items are ideal for boutiques.
Imagine taking sections of your store and creating “mini-stores” off the walls.
This is relatively simple to accomplish. If you are handy or have a carpenter on staff, you
can build perpendicular walls to create the area. If you are afraid of taking up too much
floor space, the walls can be 4’ wide by 8-10’ high. The end of the wall looks best when
is capped with decorative molding. Even a small T shape will cap it nicely while adding
support. Building an arch over the two walls will add charm, ambience and best yet, more
support for the walls.
If you don’t have a carpenter but have some basic skills, hang lattice down from
the ceiling in panels to create your walls and use a ready made arch (the same color and
material as the lattice) for your entrance. Attach the bottom of the lattice to 4”x4” pieces
of wood that sit on the floor to give the walls stability. Try to make it look as finished as
possible. To give a more upscale look to the shop use the 90o lattice rather than the
angled variety. Attach the walls to the arch with “L” brackets.
Now you’re ready to paint. Naturally, it helps to know what you’re going to show
and sell in this shop before starting to paint. If you are showing vases in a variety of
colors, the best wall and lattice colors are white, celadon green, pale yellow (very pale),
pale pink or even a light violet or blue. Keep the colors soft and light. That will give you
the best palette for the vases. If, however, you are showing very light colored objects in
this space, consider painting the back wall a terra cotta or deeper green. This will
highlight your light colored merchandise.
Whatever colors you decide to paint, make sure they work with the overall look of
your store. You can go crazy when you build boutiques – the fun of boutiquing
merchandise is in the creative expression. But, if you paint or decorate a boutique within
your store with a lot of hot pink, make sure that you have some hot pink azaleas or other
flowers in another visible section of the store to balance the color throughout the space.
After painting, your next step is fixturing the space. If you are planning to place
vases of many shapes, colors and sizes in the area you will need shelving. If you don’t
have shelves and need to build some inexpensively, take your terra cotta pots and, using
different sizes as needed, stack them to the height you want. Polished edge 1/4” glass
shelves are best to hold up the merchandise. Glass may seem more expensive but in
reality, may be less than wood. Another plus with glass is that light shines through to the
bottom shelves. But, you may complain it collects dust and dirt. Well, so does wood – it’s
just less visible. Just because you can’t see the dirt doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be cleaned
on a daily basis. When you carry gifts, the gift area must be treated like any gift shop –
dusted daily!
Other types of fixtures include basic standards and brackets that are available
from any display-oriented store (look under Display in your Yellow Pages) or, from a
hardware store. When you buy the brackets and standards, make sure to get the heavy-
duty variety. It will pay off in the future when you load your shelves up for Christmas or
spring. When you skimp, they will eventually sag, snap and boom, you’ve lost your
inventory!
There are fun, more expensive fixtures on the market that you can look at for your
store. If you have a very organic/natural feeling store consider rough wood shelves –
even side cuts of wood that still have the bark on the edges. If your store is more sleek
and museum like try cable systems that hold the glass or wood shelves up with metal cables.
Once you’ve set up your fixtures it’s time to add a sign. This is a custom area so
you may want to give it a name that’s fun (and appropriate.) You can get as cute as you
want, but don’t get too obscure. You do want your customers to understand what’s being
sold. For example, “Vunderful Vases” may work for some of your customers while
others may think you’ve lost your collective minds.
A sign should be easy to read and reflect the image of the merchandise it’s
identifying. If you are selling mid-priced gifts, vases or accessories, you can get fun and
funky. Lower priced items can have even more fun with the sign. Higher priced
merchandise seems to sell well with more serious signs.
Signs can be made through your local sign shop. If it’s a temporary boutique,
there is no need to spend a fortune on a sign. Consider Sintra board or Gatorfoam. Vinyl
letters will work well to get your image across. If you want to spend more money, use cut
out Gator letters to get dimension in your sign. The more dimension, the more visible.
Color is also important. Tone on tone signs disappear. Strong color contrasts are the key
to visible signs.
Decorating your boutique is the fun part. Look at your top shelf. It’s usually a bit
too high to shop comfortably. It is, however, the ideal place to “boutique” your
merchandise. This is a simple display technique. Pull together several items that work
together visually. They should be related by color and use. These items should be ideal if
bought together for a home. If they are different heights and shapes, even better. You
may need a plexi riser or two to get some height for some of the pieces. Ideally, you want
to use an odd number of pieces – 3, 5 or 7. Odd numbers are more interesting than even.
Group these items together on the center of the top shelf. The bulk of the
merchandise from this group should be directly below on the shelves so your customer
can look at the display and then pick up their purchase off the lower shelf.
Adding a decorative element will draw even more attention to this top shelf. A
simple grouping of dried flowers artfully arranged in one of the items may do the trick.
Look at your stock. You shouldn’t have to buy anything for display – you’re where
display people go for props!
Now that you’ve set up your first boutique, don’t stop there. Look around for
other spaces in your store where you can carve out some space and create a special area
for a merchandise story. Try a terra cotta shop, a bird area – adding fake birds hanging
from the ceiling and perched on all the lattice walls. Have fun with this. It’s not
expensive and it will add tremendously to your store’s ambience and better yet, sales!

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Article Tags: 4 x4, ambience, boutiques, carpenter, decorative molding, department store, floor space, fun stuff, gardening tools, henri bendel, home gardener, merchandise selection, mini stores, pieces of wood, retail concept, specialty items, store merchandising, straw hats, two walls, vases



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