The holiday season is one of the best times to make a retail store come alive. A joyful and eye-catching display can create magic for your customers and send a message of the holiday spirit through your marketing plan. What better way to make a profit?
Decorating a store can pique a shopper’s curiosity to find out what’s new. There are even reports of higher sales by retailers when they do nothing more than hang up colorful, holiday-themed lights.
By bringing in vibrant decorations, you can change the entire energy of the store and give your customers a warm feeling. And we all know it’s the experience that brings back customers over and over again to your business.
Your holiday decorating could be one of the reasons your business gains a loyal customer following.
Choose a Theme
The idea of decorating your store can be both exciting and overwhelming. There’s no end to holiday decoration ideas or what you can do. But, that might lead you to create an overall jumbled up, confusing mismatched look for your store.
The first thing you need to decide is what kind of theme you want to follow for the season. This is also important because it will give you and your staff guidelines to follow for what can be included and what cannot be.
Lights are, of course, the life of any decoration. They are a must if you want to catch people’s eyes. Remember to decorate in such a way that you are telling a story and your customers are the readers.
Create visuals that resonate with your customers.
Some classic themes are snow (snowflakes and snowmen), the traditional look (a parade of the colors red and green), razzle-dazzle (glitter, sparkles, and twinkling lights) and vintage (old-fashioned decorations). These themes might not be brand-new or unique, but they will surely not be amiss.
Budget Your Theme
Now that you have chosen a theme for your retail store, it’s time to create a budget. It’s not necessary to have a big budget to create your holiday look.
You don’t have to compete with retailers like Tiffany and Saks, which can afford to create a one-of-a-kind look every year. The main aim should be to give your customers a truly exciting shopping environment and bring out their inner wonder-child.
And, it shouldn’t stop with the shoppers; a beautifully decorated window can be enchanting to passersby and employees alike.
How do you put up more decorations and more lights on a tight budget? Rather than buying all your decorations, you and your staff can make your own. Other than saving money, it’s a nice way to bond with your colleagues during the holiday season.
If you decide to DIY, apart from Christmas lights and garlands, some common tools and accessories you will need to are cardboard sheets, wooden boxes, repurposed items used as props, glitter glue, spray paint, chunks of Styrofoam, and knives, scissors, tape, needles, and a staple gun to put it all together.
Staple guns can be a life-saver as they come in handy in almost all situations. From piecing together a Christmas tree to stapling a garland on a wooden wall, staple guns are the go-to tool. You can find the best one through reviews.
Christmas Trees with a Twist
No holiday-themed decoration is complete without a Christmas tree. And here’s the interesting part: there’s no need to get an actual Christmas tree or a tree that’s meant to look like one.
It’s more creative to design and create your own Christmas tree with the shop’s merchandise! It’s innovative, functional, and a great marketing plan wrapped up in one.
It’s easy if the retail store is a bookshop. You can create a magnificent tree with large, hardcover books that might not be selling well. Put a star tree-topper on top and voila!
Another great idea is to use wooden boxes to make the tree. Spray paint them in your theme’s color and stack the boxes up in the shape of a tree. The open end of the boxes should face outside.
Put your merchandise inside the boxes and display them!
This is great for displaying small items like jewelry, small toys, mugs, etc. If you find it a challenge or expensive to make a big Christmas tree out of boxes, you can also opt to make smaller ones and place them strategically around the shop.
Cardboard Scenery
As mentioned earlier, if you want to resonate with your customers, it’s important to create a story behind your theme. A story that your customers can relate to or something that will make them excited.
If you are good with scissors, you can create scenes by cutting up cardboard. A reindeer or a yule log scene is popular during the holiday seasons.
Cardboard can be dull to look at, but you can vamp up the decoration by adding Christmas lights, spray paint, and glitter. Place your merchandise and mannequins around the decoration, and you’ll have a fun corner for your customer.
Window Display
No holiday decorations in a retail store are complete without an over-the-top window display. No matter what you are showcasing in your window, there’s no reason not to frame your display with decorations.
Greenery, garlands, tinsel or ornaments, Christmas lights – anything that matches your theme. If you live in an area where it doesn’t snow, you can cleverly create contrast by decorating the window with paper and cotton snowflakes.
The best thing about paper snowflakes is they are very easy to make!
To add more flair to the decoration, you can also pour fake snowflakes mixed with glitter around the window. Glittering and sparkling, your window will look something out of a wonderland.
Creativity Means There’s No Wrong Style
There’s no end to inspirations found online on holiday decorations. It depends only on you on how you want to transform your place of business to reflect your holiday spirit. Let your imagination run wild and remember: you can’t go wrong in this!
