Is Clutter Killing Your Optical Displays?

Here’s the skinny, clutter kills. Too much clutter in the form of accessories and add-on marketing items can be a real killer when it comes to effectively displaying frames. It can affect the overall feel of the office and detract from what you’re really trying to sell, the frames.

Now I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings but some offices I walk into give me the same anxious feeling I get whenever I enter Walmart®. This feeling comes from the cramped aisles and the myriad of vendor marketing pieces attacking me at every turn. In optical offices this clutter doesn’t usually happen on purpose, as in Walmart®, but is many times propagated by the good intentions of the varied frame vendors hoping to sell their wares in your office. So, slowly, all of the many different marketing pieces and strategies from these many different vendors can begin to create a garbled mess.

So here are some things that might help to save you from falling into the clutter trap:

1. Take a step out your front door and walk back in as if you are a brand new client. Ask yourself, “Self, is this an inviting environment? Do I feel comfortable? Am I being attacked by branding statements? Is there a common look and feel or is it ‘shabby chic’ without the ‘chic’? (And here’s the big question to ask) Would I buy my frames here?” Seems simplistic but in our day to day utilitarian meanderings about our offices we tend to normalize our surroundings and, many times, do not take notice of the office as a whole.

2. It’s also important to define exactly what feeling or impression your office is presenting to your clients when they walk in your door. Then define what you want that impression to be. If “what it is” and “what you want it to be” don’t match then it’s time to go about creating a plan to change that. It might be as easy as deciding which vendor POP’s are necessary and which ones are not. It might be the need for a total remodel of the office but the important thing is to define what you want, make it happen and then never let it get out of hand again. Also be sure to keep your staff involved in this process so they know what the plan is and how to evaluate whether something is a “fit” for the plan or not.

3. Rotate marketing pieces. It won’t hurt anything to take one vendor marketing piece down for a month or two and replace it with something else. This does two things for you. One is that it will continually “freshen” the look of the office. Any regular visitors will, if not actively then subliminally, notice the changes. This gives the impression of an active, fresh and rotating stock, which goes a long way in the consumer’s buying decision.

The second thing it will do is highlight the diversity of your frame offerings. If, on subsequent visits, your clients see Juicy Couture® then Coach® then Gucci® they are going to get a much clearer picture of just how diverse your frame selection is. If they see the same display over and over again they will develop the same type of normalization we talked about earlier and your frame selection will just become “normal” in your client’s mind.