Merchandising your store has always been a fundamental part of being a retailer, but since the pandemic, it's evolved from being important to your company's image and sales to being critical to the health of your staff and clients.
Proper COVID-19 etiquette requires us to do much more than we used to. Having signs and sanitizer stations at the front door, monitoring the number of people in the store, creating masks and glove protocols, and keeping staff and clients 6 feet apart all come into play. It's definitely challenging, but the good news is the merchandising skills and standards we flooring dealers have learned over many years can still help your store compete with the best at making clients feel safe and comfortable. Here are a few ways COVID-19 has impacted our stores and how we've dealt with it using best practices we'd already built into our business.
Signs with safety instructions
Keeping clean, uncluttered front windows has always been important—we've all seen windows with 10 years of stickers about credit cards accepted, alarm warnings, flooring association membership and more. This can affect the first impression of your business, so a good practice is to have only your store hours displayed. With COVID-19, though, we now need to list who can enter the store and how many people, as well as COVID-19 social distancing rules. Here are two tips we've implemented to keep our front windows looking professional:
Take the time to laminate your COVID-19 sign. A good laminator is a must!
Hang your sign square to the door, not crooked. Make sure the tape is clean and all four corners have the same size tape in the same spots.
Our clients look to us to have a great sense of design and vision for their homes, and even how we hang our signs can show our design skills.
Sanitizing stations and open space
Upon entry, new clients need to feel familiar with the inside and not be intimidated by people or confusing, crowded aisles. An open entry area helps, which translates into their comfort in spending money with you. With COVID-19, we now need to have a sanitizer station at the entry, and a good practice is to also include a box of masks and gloves (find a nice piece of furniture to put them on). COVID-19 is going to be here for a while, so don't make this station look temporary. If need be, move some displays or merchandise back to maintain the open area.
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Limiting numbers
Limiting the amount of people in the store is one of the hardest things. In flooring, we are lucky that many buyers come to us as couples or families. Have your sign say something about limiting the number of "families" or "buying groups" rather than the number of people. A family of four will stay close together, allowing others to be elsewhere and maintain social distancing. If your sign says "maximum of four people," you'll lose the second buying group. We had a floor sign made at a local printer (about $50). This sits back from the entrance; this way, if the store gets busy, staff can move it to the door so clients line up behind it. Many stores also get pre-printed floor stickers (about $10 each) that show directions in the store.
Keeping samples sanitized
Having clients touch, feel, and take home samples is critical to sales. Two techniques to manage them right now are to either have clients wear gloves in the store or have sample drop-off areas where staff can wipe down returned samples. Try to have the drop-off area away from the front door—loose samples waiting to be sanitized where clients come in looks messy.
Wearing masks
Many customers who wear masks feel strongly that masks protect others as well as themselves. If it's not already mandatory where you're located, it should be required for your salespeople to wear masks if their clients are. Of course, staff can wear masks any time they feel the need, but if a client is wearing a mask, so should the staff dealing with the client. Having your client wear a mask while you don't is a fast way to not be trusted by the client, and as we all know, trust was the No. 1 decision factor in the flooring industry long before COVID-19.
COVID-19 is sure throwing a lot of curveballs at our industry. Following the best practices that made us successful in the first place will be important to working through this difficult time.
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