Non-Traditional Development Questions: Have Any?

Non-traditional growth is a hot topic these days...especially in food service. At the National Restaurant Association's NRA Show 2010 this May, F.C. Dadson's own Marie VanDrisse and a panel of esteemed concept development pros will deliver an educational session on expanding food service concepts into non-traditional locations.

The panelists are busy preparing their presentation and would love some help from you! Non-traditional growth may be growing in popularity, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's easy for everyone to understand. What are some questions you'd like to see addressed regarding non-traditional development? Leave them as a comment and we'll put together some answers for you.

For those attending the NRA Show, the session, titled "Expanding Your Concept Into Non-Traditional Locations" will take place Sunday, May 23rd at 10-11:30am and feature:

• Marie VanDrisse, Executive National Account Manager, F.C. Dadson
• Greg Powell, VP of Concept Innovation, Denny's Corporation
• Lynette McKee, Chief Development Officer, Checkers Drive-In Restaurants
• Marie Gill, Director of Business Development & Brand Strategy, Seattle's Best Coffee
• Steven Brush, Principal, Brush Enterprises
  

For everyone else, keep an eye here on The Dadson Diaries where we will feature highlights from the presentation as well as answers to our readers' questions.

Chapter #3 - Making the Right Design Choice

Picking up from last month, here's the next chapter in our kiosk story...

Chapter #3 - Making the Right Design Choice

Creating a kiosk is like making a salad. Some people prefer the freedom and creativity of making their own and that is why restaurants have salad bars. Others prefer to leave the salad making up to the chef and will order the house salad. It's usually less expensive than a trip to the salad bar, and provides a satisfying -if unspectacular- prelude to the meal.

With kiosk designs, custom applications can really turn heads -especially if you're incorporating unusual shapes and metal components. Depending on what the mall will let you get away with, you have the potential to use innovative materials and design elements to create a real show stopper. However, show stoppers can and often do come with a show stopping price tag.

But if you're budget doesn't afford you the luxury of a custom design, most pre-designed "house" kiosks do come with some flexibility. Just like getting to choose what kind of dressing you want on that house salad, customizing your graphics can add a flavorful punch to your kiosk. In fact, some experts say that the use of signage can do as much to customize a look as incorporating custom design elements.

The decision on which way to go is a difficult one. Often it's driven by budget, but it also comes down to what best fits your needs and the scope of the project. Let's just say that if Disney came to F.C. Dadson and asked us to create a kiosk that resembles Cinderella's Castle, that wouldn't be too surprising. The again, if a start-up business came to us requesting an over-the-top design, we might try to steer them in a more realistic direction.

Once you've decided whether you're heading to the salad bar or ordering the house salad, the designing can begin. And once you have a design, then you need to figure out where the kiosk(s) will go -a topic covered in my next chapter. Stay tuned...

--Marie VanDrisse (Connect with me on LinkedIn.)

Antonio Ballatore Writes a Prescription for Store Makeover Success

Do you have a favorite "go-to" TV channel? You know, that one channel you can switch on and be entertained for hours on end when nothing else is on? For me, that's HGTV. Whether they're redecorating, remodeling, building, buying, selling or flipping, I'm hooked. (Even more so now that my husband and I have started on the road to home ownership, but that's besides the point.)

Sunday nights are generally a bust for me and TV, so I found myself flipping to my go-to channel just before 9pm. Just in time to catch The Antonio Treatment, a fairly new design show that features former Design Star winner Antonio Ballatore making over a variety of spaces in the span of an hour-long show. Last night, he stopped at a vintage-inspired clothing and accessories shop called Pull My Daisy and asked to make it over. A store makeover? Now he's speaking my language!

As it turns out, Ballatore is no stranger to store displays as his father was an influential visual merchandiser back in the day. In fact, throughout the show, we see the host call up dear old dad and ask his opinion. My favorite gem of fatherly wisdom offered up: you have to find the right mannequin and then go from there. Said like a true visual merchandiser, but I think it can be translated into even broader terms to mean, "Find a design element that inspires you and start there." (And as an interesting side note, did you know that prior to the 50s and 60s, mannequins were designed with actual facial expressions? During the mid-20th century, mannequin makers opted for a more neutral face, or as I like to call it, a pout.)

When the show finished, I jotted down a few quick design notions I got from the store makover -the prescription for The Antonio Treatment, if you will:

• A single design element repeated throughout the space can have a big visual impact. For Pull My Daisy, Ballatore brought in 48 palm tree cut-outs, painted in white, to line the perimeter walls with. In between the tree trunks, he hung clothing hooks and rods to create merchandise display areas.
• Keep it uncomplicated with a simple color scheme and incorporate "pops of color" with accessories and graphics. A black ceiling and gray walls provided a neutral backdrop for the yellows, peaches and blues Ballatore brought in. Thinking ahead though, the black and gray are basic enough to go with a multitude of colors should the store owner decide to bring in new fabrics or artwork.
• To really create a "wow" factor, take a design element and blow it up. For the store, Ballatore used a floor-to-ceiling wall mural to cover the entire back wall. The result was a conversation piece that drew people into the space.
  

And lastly, in the words of Antonio Ballatore himself, designers should aim to "bring something to the client that the client couldn't think of" themselves. Well said.

-- Liz Blohm

Doing More on the Store Floor

Last week, The Dadson Diaries featured an excerpt from an article discussing how you can put your store design and layout to work for you, creating an environment that practically sells itself. This week, I'd like to switch things up and take a look at the operational side of the store floor.

In this connected world we live in, the store floor has become a hub of activity. First, it must serve those traditional customers who come into your store, find a product they want, and make a purchase. But with more and more retailers going cross-channel with online storefronts, store floors are also becoming order takers, inventory managers, distribution centers and so on. There are so many options available for purchasing these days: order online/pick-up in store, research online/reserve in store, order online/return to store, buy in store/ship it home, etc. Without the right IT systems and employee training in place, cross-channel retailers risk losing the sale and the customer.

In this white paper prepared for Stores.org by Manhattan Associates, the implications of a poorly-functioning store floor are made apparent as well as what cross-channel retailers can do to build and support their internal operations and help them become a "fully functional supply chain 'node,' capable of managing both the in-flow of merchandise as well as the out-flow of goods to customers and other store locations."

Multi-channel customers represent a sizable sales opportunity and as consumers become more and more connected, one can only expect this opportunity to continue to grow. One of the most important things for any cross-channel retailer is to create a consistent, quality experience for its customers across all the channels it operates in. A big part of that is having the merchandise available when the customer wants it and being able to deliver it in the manner that she prefers. The retailers that are able to do this as efficiently as possible are the ones that will win in the long run.

-- Larry Myer (Hook up with Larry on LinkedIn.)

Turn It Upside Down

You know what I hate? When there's a deadline for a project fast approaching and I have a bad case of creativity block (very similar to writer's block, in case you're wondering) happening. The ideas just don't flow, or they do flow but just fall flat.

Find the same thing happening to you? After hearing what The Gap did at a Vancouver, B.C. store to promote its new loyalty program, I think I might have the answer: turn what you're working on upside down and approach it from this new angle. (Side note: I mean this figuratively, but if literally turning something upside down works, I say go for it.)

-- Liz Blohm

A Retailer's Best Salesperson

Did you know that one of your best salespeople is not a person at all? Your store layout can drive people to certain areas, highlight certain products and even facilitate the purchase process. Pretty impressive, huh? Since we all like top-notch "workers," this month's featured article on the F.C. Dadson website is all about making your layout go to work for you. Here's an excerpt:

Fixture Design and Layout
Aisles lead people to the merchandise. Once there, your fixtures take over as traffic cop. Just as how our eyes follow the lines and curves of things, so do our feet. Considering this and the fact that people can't generally walk through merchandising displays, the design and layout of your fixture pieces can play a large role in directing people through a retail area.

How does this work? Fixtures create pathways for shoppers to travel and, in a very unobtrusive way, guide them towards certain areas of the store. There are two main reasons this happens and one is the fixture's design itself. The piece's shape influences how people will interact with it. For example, an angular fixture is great as a directional piece. People will follow its lines to the next stop, be it an aisle, counter or merchandise. A fixture with a more rounded or circular design encourages people to follow the curves and walk around it -perfect for corners and end caps.

The second reason deals with how the fixtures interact with each other, or the layout. Want to make sure store visitors check out certain areas of the store? Try angling the surround fixtures toward these spots. It's sort of like having a salesperson shouting, "Come this way!" Want to move people from the front of your store to the back? Aligning your fixtures creates long aisles that lead customers from one end of the store to the other. Depending on your fixtures, available space and traffic flow goals, you can achieve a number of outcomes with your fixture layout.

Click here for the rest of the article.

-- Liz Blohm

And the Award Goes To...

Did anyone else catch the Oscars last night? I have to admit, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were actually pretty entertaining as co-hosts, but I was not a fan of all the "George Clooney Angry Face" close-ups. But I digress...where was I going with this again?

Oh yes, awards. While the entertainment industry reveled in the glitz and glamour of the Oscars, Chain Store Age magazine crowned some award winners of its own this month during its 28th annual store design competition. With categories ranging from pop-up stores to shopping centers, this year's award-winning designs are fresh and innovative, vibrant and fitting of the brands they encompass. And they serve up an ample amount of inspiration for all of us in the retail industry. If these designs represent the direction retail is going, I really like where we're headed.

Just look at the overall winner, Barbie Shanghai. It's a total experience from top to bottom including the fitting rooms, and it's the stuff that little girls' dreams are made of. For pictures of the Barbie store, as well as all the other winners, check out this month's issue of Chain Store Age.

Yes, We Also Do Kiosks.

While F.C. Dadson's mostly known as a retail fixture manufacturer and build out company, we like to remind people that we do kiosks too. They've been a focus of some recent Dadson Diaries posts and with good reason: the kiosk market is growing as non-traditional locations continue to serve as an attractive avenue for expansion.

Two of our clients, BrowArt 23 and Shapes Brow Bar, are taking advantage of mall traffic with national kiosk programs, and here's a little taste of what we've been able to do for them.

BrowArt 23 (website)


























Shapes Brow Bar (website)














For more about F.C. Dadson's kiosk programs, click here.

-- Liz Blohm

Where You Are May Trump Who You Are

It's a "buyer's market" out there in real state world and businesses are surely taking advantage of it. Now may be the time to nab up some additional square footage, but please don't go at it all willy-nilly.

Due diligence is so important in real estate selection. Even having the power of a nationally-recognizable brand may not be enough to overcome a less-than-stellar location. So, avoid the lure of a "good deal" and stick with the "good investment"- an affordable space the ultimately meets your real estate requirements in a neighborhood that's also home to your target demographic. Not only will you be setting yourself up for a better chance at sales success, but you might also find build-out cost-savings by taking the time to find a more suitable space.

Inc Magazine's website is featuring a pretty solid article on real estate selection in it's Office & Operations section. For those Franchise Finance & Development Conference attendees seeking more on site selection and build out, stop by the F.C. Dadson/Javelin Solutions booth during show hours.