Lessons

Lesson Info

Store Displays

We've talked a lot about them, but I'm just gonna close the gap real quickly with a couple other options, because I want you guys to think out of the box Children's specialty stores. This is also something that we've spent a lot of time honing and creating relationship. This is something where there's everything from getting your images up to doing charity events with them, whether it's fashion shows and there's so many places you can take it. This is the only show, this one, because this is the first display I ever had, and I This is the one where I made all the mistakes. So I'd rather share the trauma with you as opposed to the success, because I don't want you to make the same mistakes. The first thing you do when you go to secure a display. Somebody asked me this on the break is how do you if you're if you don't have a relationship, how do you do that? Well, for me, I saw this new Children store and I thought, Well, the first thing I need to do it So what's in it for them? I need t...

o go shock. There. I need to be a client. But I know that when I go into these places, I'm always looking for the person in charge. I'm not going to take the first A sales associate that comes up and says, Can I help you? I'm gonna say no, I'm just looking. I'm gonna be looking for the person bossing everybody around because that's the person that probably has. Is that the decision makers? So I'm gonna look for that person in this case. I immediately recognized the owner. It was a new company. So she was hustling around just very, very busy. So I went out of my way to find her and I said, Hey, I've got an event. I'm going to Can you help me? I have four Children. Any four cute outfits. I'm going Teoh an event out in New Jersey and I wanna have really cute outfit. So of course, having seen her prices, four outfits was good for her. So she spent time helping me secure everything from hair bows down to shoes like these great outfits and the whole time we were talking and I was getting kind of nervous because we was taking a long time, but I hadn't found my Segway into How can I create this? How can I be sure this up? So it got to the point where I was already. I was up to the cash register and bang and I'm looking around and I'm kind of trying to find my in and she's ringing it up. And of course I see on the stand. At that time, Kim Anderson was a photographer that the hand colored, antique looking Children dressed up in their parents close. I saw some cards there that were hand colored and I turned around said, Oh my gosh, there still cute. You know what you should do? You should take some of these cute outfits and get pictures on your wall cause she had bare walls and get some pictures like this up on your wall and she said, Oh, my gosh, that's a great idea. Any thought of that? Do you know a photographer? And I said, I totally dio you're not gonna believe this, but I happen to be one. And so she laughed about that. And then we started talking and I said, You know what? We've got a display program where we will provide you so many images. It's best if we use your clients because you've got some people who obviously spend well here. You want toe, you know, give them something back. It's great for them. It's great for us. It's great for you. You provide the clothing, etcetera. She got very, very excited about that. Meanwhile, she's adding it all hope and she's like, OK, your total is $1252. I was like, You know, I didn't say anything cause now it's that awkward thing of where I'm not going to start putting things back because, you know, I don't look like that guy. But on the other side of it, that was far more than I had intended to spend. It was like four outfits and a few extra accessories, and it was like $1200 for these and I I didn't want to back out of it, so I sort of swallowed my pride and paid and left. But again, I felt like it was worth it. That was way too much money, even, I mean for me at the time. But I just felt like I had created a great connection, and I didn't want anything negative to disrupt it. This kind of goes back to remember when the lady stole the money from me. Same thing. Be smarter when you do these things, like pick two outfits and stick with that. And then you don't feel so dumb when you spend so much. But the real reason that I wanted to share that with you is that the first go round? I didn't really know what I was doing. I just was. I told her pick five or six clients that you love that a really great provide the clothing we're gonna do. Kind of the same thing. Hand colored. She photographed them outside and all hand color. Um, well, this is remembers is back in the actual hand, coloring your painting, the image days. So the day of the shoot, with very little direction, we show up. All of the clothing she had picked was completely wrong for hand calling. Very dark, very neutral tones, things that wouldn't pick up colors, all of the models, not all of them. But a lot of the mob models that she had selected were not quite right. She picked people that were good to her work great for her clothing. Like the little girl, you see, adorable little girl. But she is a little girl in black and she's she's 2.5, but she has no hair. It hasn't grown in yet. So she's just a blonde, you know, that just has that very short hair. So, you know, her clothes are big and fluffy and hair bows and all that stuff, and she just didn't really have the look for the style. So this was a good learning experience, because from this we said, Okay, next time we need clothes that mid tone toe lighter so we can hand color. Then we need girls with lots of hair and we were able to kind of refine it. So this was sort of our first attempt. However, one of the Children in this image, their family is still there. The first family had from this. Their family is still very, very good clients of ours, and their daughter is now. I guess you'd be 11 turning 12. Just out of curiosity, I looked it up in the last. She was two when we started in the last 10 years. my company. They've spent $54,000 just that one client from this one location. So and again, I'm giving you big numbers. Those are not the norm. I have lots of clients has been 500 1000 1500. So but there are certain places when you go in and the little jacket down there, the little pink jacket that's a six month toddler size. Those were $280 jackets. So and again the time this was pre recession, by the way, this was right when things were golden. So this company, unfortunately, is no longer even in business. So it's one of those things where you sort of ebb and flow with the market. This was good times on. This was a great time to do that. So so start thinking out of the box. There are a 1,000,000 places in your community that you could create relationships with its putting yourself out and making it happen. Other things that you could do. Network marketing. You can provide such sessions certificates like, for instance, with the clothing store. One of the ways we helped benefit her is when people would buy things from me. We would give them gift certificates back to her. When people would spend a certain amount with her, she would give them gift certificates towards our work. We worked with him on coupon packs where I think about marketing. It's much easier to like if you've got five vendors in a strip mall that you're working with and everybody is willing to do a little coupon in an envelope. Well, all of a sudden you're postage is 1/4 of what it would be if you did it by yourself. Does that make sense? So getting four vendors or for local stores to create a little coupon pack and it might be something you want to have, like items like a kid's hair salon and a kid's clothing store in a kid's portrait photographer and maybe kids shoe store. So all of those guys create this little kid pack, and all of a sudden, instead of paying full posted, you're paying 1/4 of what you would pay. You're printing costs are 1/4 of what you would pay, and you're creating those kind of relationships. Other places somebody asked me, Have I ever thought of hair salons or nail places off those. I think we've done every type of campaign that is one benefit of 27 years. We've tried it all, and I could probably less than 100 things that don't work. This is a store lolly locks that is now franchised across the country. But this is one of those early marketing pieces where they wanted to use their own Children, and they wanted their companies called lolly locks. They wanted to use big lollypop so high key white background, simple khaki and white clothing with little lollipops. These images to this day and this is probably 8 to 10 years ago, there, still using them in their marketing because it's their Children and they're not willing. Now their Children are halfway to college or if not in college, they're not going to give that up, because emotionally, these ladies that built this franchise, it was. They came together, their kids, you know, they raised their kids together, and that's their their heritage. And so they're very, very loyal clients to what we do. But again, when you're thinking about this, let's modernize it a little bit, not just getting the displays up, but how do you take it to that next step? Well, once you get a display up for Saul, who should be in the display stylists and their kids and their families, right? In addition to that, every stylist that I photographed, I'm going to think You know what? I'll tell you what I'll give you if you keep this on your little desk, you know where they're cutting hair. If you keep this, I will give you a nice little frame. Five by 78 by 10 whatever size you want frame and some business cards with your Children on them. So, of course, that's a great tie in there. So we have little gift cards and things, and I will take the time Teoh put their Children on a card, and I'll run it through like the lab do 25 at a time. Fish bowl drawings at places like this are great. These are the things that you want to you want to find. What's the next step? Aiken Dio. Now we've talked a lot about temporary displays. We talked about the mall temporary displays, but there's things that are even we consider very much more temporary. They might be just for a week or two. One of the ones that we do is a Mother's Day campaign. This is one where we make these little table tents and we go toe every store that sells something that a mother would want. So this would be jewelry? This would be hair salons. This would be flower shops. Oh, my gosh. They're wonderful. So we go with here and we tell them. Look, we have this little table 10 and we have these certificates Cesaire basically gift certificates that offer an associate session in 11 by 14 portrait of $625 value. Anybody that comes in here during the next three days for the holiday weekend, Mother's Day weekend and they buy something for Mom. Given this beautiful envelope that they now they're getting your flowers plus $ gift certificate. Every dad is gonna be like, I'll take another gift that my wife's gonna think I bought. It's created it looks like Dad bought it. It does not look like it was a free gift in a store with the way we word it. It says we want to give you something that you would cherish forever. Please enjoy the certificate for an associate session 11 by 14. And on the front, it says, Because we love you, mother. So it looks like something that Dad bought Dad is all about giving Mom that extra $600 gift. Now, for us, it's an opportunity to create relationships. Is it technically a free session? Yeah, but for me, look at the time of year. Look at all every single thing I've told you about Displays teaching at Mom's groups. Somebody tell me, What time of the year do we do this? January, February, March and April were so busy doing this kind of stuff that we're amping up for our busy season because we know that these clients eventually may turn into our long term clients. They may be a one hit wonder, but I will take a one hit wonder in a few $100 in January over sitting there freaking out, wondering how I'm gonna pay the phone bill. It's just not worth it to me. So So I said this earlier, but it's the what's in it for them attitude. All of these campaigns, from teaching to displays the bottom line It's not about you walk in every situation saying, How can I make their world better? And it will always come back to you tenfold so So you can always Once you get into it, you'll you'll find you'll find the connective piece, The thing that brings you together with the clothing store. It was spending a little money on my own Children. Teoh have her understand that I was committed to what she did. She looked at me and went. The photographer just spent 1250 bucks. She's obviously wealthy photographer. At that time, I was not a wealthy photographer. I was up to 10 kids at that time. But she related what she was trying to do in our community, which gives really high end, boutique style Children products. She related to me, saying, You're the right kind of person to work with. I want to work with you. You're successful, you can afford me. I can afford to work with you So those are the things that we're looking for