Make sure you know the key questions to ask your retail installation services partner
As you stroll down the main street of your nearby small town known for trendy shops, ice cream, and artisans, one store stands out. It’s different. Very different. The store sign is all black. The words witch and magic catch your eye. The window display hints that this store is not like the others.
You walk in. It’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced. The music is barely there, but it relaxes you, somehow piquing your curiosity. The store is lined with antique-looking shelving and cabinets with carefully placed jars of creams, lotions, powders, and herbs. The back of the store features books about herbs, potions, witches, and magic. And everywhere you turn you see the most stunning candles. The sales staff are all dressed in black gowns and appear to float around the store.
You end up leaving with a book about magic for grown-ups, a beautiful piece of art, and a lot of candles. This store did something for you. You bought products you wouldn’t normally buy. It’s hard to explain but now you’re following this store on social media and thinking about another visit this weekend.
This is the power of retail installation and design: when done right, it’s like magic. Getting people to walk into your store and buy from you becomes less about the product and more about the story.
What are Retail Installation Services?
Retail installation services include the delivery, handling, assembly, installation, and maintenance of all retail fixtures, millwork, and equipment.
An experienced retail installation services partner does it all from the site survey through to fixture assembly and regular store maintenance.
- Site Survey and Design: optimizing your space to ensure ideal customer flow, product placement, branding, and customer experience. A key first step in ensuring the retail store environment fits your products, brand, and customers.
- Fixture Assembly and Installation: rely on expert fixture installers to assemble and install your racks, shelves, display units, kiosks, digital displays, and more. This is how your store comes to life, creating that vital first impression.
- POS and Equipment Installation: professional assembly, installation, and testing of the point of sale (POS) system including all hardware, software, cabling, and technology. Be confident your sales staff does not need to apologize for a finicky debit machine or card reader.
- Signage, Branding, and Graphic Installation: trust a team of professional graphic installers to get your retail image just right. Relax knowing you have brand consistency with expertly installed 3D window displays, wallpaper murals, cut letters, films, banners, and digital displays.
- Lighting, Audio, and Video System Installation: set the tone for your retail space with lighting, sound, and visuals that motivate, entertain, and relax your customers. Be confident your expensive lighting, augmented/virtual reality displays, and sound system are assembled and installed correctly.
- Furniture and Custom Fixture Installation: stand out from your competitors with custom-designed and built fixtures, millwork, furniture, lighting, and signage. Get just the right look with the colors, fabric, and materials that communicate your brand image and mission.
- Maintenance, Warehousing, and Logistics: your retail fixtures, millwork, signage, window displays, and entire store space are valuable assets. Preventative and reactive maintenance combined with professional warehousing and logistics teams means your store is always looking its best 24/7/365.
Psychology, Customer Behavior, and Retail Store Design
Your customer is in charge. They determine the success, popularity, and staying power of your products and brand. You need to understand what makes people walk into your store and buy from you.
As you work with a retail installation services partner to roll-out or update your brick-and-mortar store, keep in mind the four factors influencing customer behavior:
- Social
Air Jordans. Nike leverages Air Jordans and the Jordan brand to appeal to a wide demographic of people – many of whom have never played basketball, using the brand image and products to draw people to their stores.
This is the perfect example of social factors influencing brand staying power and consumer buying decisions. Social influence from friends, celebrities, clubs and group, and aspirational relationships compel us to shop in specific stores. - Cultural
The holiday shopping period. In North America especially, the Christmas holiday season has an enormous cultural influence on how people shop and spend their money. Shopping malls and retail areas are overwhelmed with people compelled to buy gifts.
This is a prime example of how cultural factors encourage people to shop in stores they wouldn’t normally visit. For example, parents of teenagers shopping in a specialty skateboard store for a new deck or a teenager shopping in a quilt store for some fat quarters for their mom. - Personal
Lululemon. Everyone in your yoga class or out for brunch on a Sunday is wearing Lululemon. You also wear Lululemon. The company’s brand image appeals to health-conscious and active individuals and anyone who aspires to these ideals.
It’s important you know your customer demographic – what they want and why they want it – and then build a connection with your products, brand, and retail design. - Psychological
Apple. The iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and the original iPod. These are all products that we didn’t know we needed or wanted.
Apple understands the psychological influence of personal motivation, learning style, belief system, and self-perception on buying decisions – and how to exploit these in its retail design.
Apple makes it easy for people walking by their stores to see others using and enjoying Apple products. This creates an impulse to walk into the store, touch and use the products, ask questions, and learn how the products solve their challenges (often challenges people didn’t realize they had).
To connect the dots between social, cultural, personal, and psychological influence and buying decisions, your first impression speaks volumes. Your window display is your first chance to grab attention and tell consumers you have what they want.
Once they walk into your store, the fixtures, millwork, lighting, signage, sound, digital displays, furniture, and store layout go to work – guiding people through the store, compelling them to linger at displays, and making it easy for them to swipe their credit card, scan their smart phone, or tap their smart watch.
Using Retail Fixtures, Design, and Layout to Make People Buy
It’s about more than graphics and a snazzy window display (though we do love these as well). Millwork. Retail fixtures. Lighting. Layout. These sell your products. These help you tell your story.
Imagine transplanting the fixtures, millwork, lighting, signage, and vibe of Costco into Modani… the plain metal shelves, concrete floor, brash lighting, and frenetic pace doesn’t fit with Modani’s sleek, modern, fashionable, and trendy furniture – we’re guessing sales would drop and the brand’s image would falter.
But for the Costco brand and customers, the shelving, racks, lighting, millwork, store layout, and vibe work.
And this explains why it’s so crucial to get that first impression right.
Your fixtures, millwork, and entire store aesthetic speak volumes and must touch on the social, cultural, psychological, and personal factors influencing your customer demographic.
To nail this and create the magic, you need the right retail installation services partner. You need a partner who understands it all – your brand, image, customers, and products and retail trends, the realities of retail sales, challenges of selling in brick-and-mortar stores, customer demographics, store layout, and more.
Before hiring a retail installation services partner, ask these questions:
- How do you approach retail installation for a brand, location, or store concept you haven’t worked with before?
- What design, materials, colors, and other visual elements represent my brand’s image?
- How do you ensure brand and image consistency throughout the store, including during seasonal roll-outs and updates?
- What is your approach to assembly and installation of custom fixtures, millwork, signage, and displays?
- How much experience do you have managing retail installations for our customer demographic? Can you give me some examples?
- What do you see as the top retail trends influencing our market? How can we use retail design to gain a competitive advantage?
- What is your strategy and experience with retail installation maintenance, logistics, and warehousing?
- What questions do you have for me about our company brand, image, customer demographic, and sales cycles?
There is a time and a place to take a risk, but choosing your retail installation services partner is not one of them. Make sure you know who you’re hiring, the work they have done, and their track record in creating lasting first impressions.
At Dynamic, our unique combination of IN-HOUSE offerings makes us your single source provider for all your retail installation service needs. No one understands installation better than we do.
Contact us to learn how we handle any aspect of your business – from an individual installation to a global roll-out.