Educate to Decorate

Educate to Decorate By Becky McCraney

Everyone knows the educated consumer buys more. And as a retailer, you need to do everything in your power to teach customers what to do with the products you display and sell.

Since we started Miss Cayce’s Christmas Store and Show Me Decorating almost 25 years ago, my sister, Kathy Harrison, and I have aimed to do just that. We’ve had many “A-ha!” moments while in business, but one of the most basic (and most important) was this: “If we create, inspire and educate our customers, they will buy more, and we will have more turns on our merchandise.”

Another of our “A-ha!” moments was when we heard a customer say, “If someone would just show me how, I could decorate myself.” Based on this, Show Me Decorating was born, and we began production on the first in our series of how-to DVDs.

Our seasonal, “everything you possibly need to decorate for the holidays” destination store opens in September, and each year, we create a whimsical wonderland to inspire and educate our customers to decorate their own homes. “We believe that we owe our success to sharing our decorating tips and techniques with our customers,” Kathy says. It all comes down to these four steps: create, inspire, educate and decorate.

Based in Midland, Texas (population: 100,000), sandwiched halfway between Dallas and El Paso, we sold more than a million dollars’ worth of holiday merchandise in 2007 in a relatively small town. Think of the possibilities for your store! To help you increase your holiday profits and widen your customers’ horizons from just purchasing more ornaments, try these easy-to-follow ideas.

Step One: Create

Months in advance, we plan market trips for buying new seasonal decorations. We determine themes and new color stories for every season, then purchase the right ingredients — large, shatterproof balls, floral, ribbon, ornaments and garlands — to completely decorate a tree. Asking how many times we can sell a tree’s exact duplicate determines the quantity of each ingredient to buy.

Kathy and I go to market regularly, both as speakers and as buyers, and the showrooms are full of inspiration. Even if it’s not something we’d necessarily duplicate in our store, we might do a different twist on it. We feel like our customers might react in the same way. Some retailers think they can’t afford a trip to market, but I say you can’t afford not to go. Find the time to go: Seeing product and vignettes in catalogues doesn’t even compare to the inspiration you’ll get seeing it in person.

We take a lot of pictures at market that we use to create an inspiration file, an album that we can go back to in future seasons for ideas if the well’s running a bit dry. You can also browse holiday and lifestyle magazines and clip ideas from them to save in your file.

Step Two: Inspire

Now, inspire and wow your customers with beautifully decorated trees. We change our store for every holiday season and have the luxury of being closed from January through August — we open as a new store every year.

Consider even closing a couple of days and reopen with a big bang! We create themed trees and vignettes that include furniture, lamps, pillows and artwork. We hope to take our customers’ breath away when they walk in the door to see themes like “Snow Candy,” which creates sugary fun with gumdrop snowmen; “Jungle Fever,” featuring zebra balls and exotic floral accents; “Jingle,” a traditional red and green theme with a punch of lime-green; and the “Jewel Box,” fit for royalty with bejeweled crowns and crosses.

At our store, instead of forcing customers to seek out an employee who could find a flower or filler spray used to decorate a display tree in our stores, we started placing floral bins right in front of each themed vignette, making the product directly accessible to the customer. We’ve also filled a “ballroom” — think ornaments, not dancing — with supplies to let customers decide the quantity, color and size they need to decorate their tree, garland or wreath. The ribbon area is a “dream come true” in variety, texture, color and design.

Step Three: Educate

We educate our customers on how to use the ingredients we are selling by conducting demonstrations and selling the Show Me Decorating DVD, which outlines a step-by-step process for flawless tree decoration. But if you don’t have the DVD, here are a few basic guidelines you can follow and recommend to your customers.

Have a plan. If you don’t have a plan to work around, it becomes a hodge-podge. With a little organization and a step-by-step process, you’ll get all of something done before you move on to another step and create a more cohesive look.

Pick a theme. Decide whether the tree will use traditional holiday colors or match the store or home décor. If you’re using a live tree, put the lights on before anything else.

Tie one on. Pick ribbon that supports your “color story.” These will be tied into bows and placed on the tree in a diamond pattern to provide a grid for placing all your other elements.

Fill it in. Amid the diamond pattern, hang big colored balls for depth and background. These are perfect around the lower half of the tree to eliminate dead green space and gaps.

Dress it up. Distribute florals and filler sprays throughout the tree in any other empty spaces you find. This works in your color and theme and finishes up your overall look.

Add your touch. Lay out your collection of ornaments. From largest to smallest, place them on the tree, giving the most meaningful ones pride of place. The process is so simple and basic, but it transforms our customers into people who feel like they can decorate!

Step Four: Decorate

When customers see the amazing trees and vignettes in your store, they’ll be itching to get home and try it for themselves. Armed with the supplies and expertise they need to duplicate the looks you’ve created, your customers are confident and empowered to deck their halls for the holidays. They can wow their friends and family just by mixing the basic ingredients with their own sentimental favorites — the results are failure-proof!