Many images can be conjured up in your mind when you hear the word “staging.” It may be decorating a house that you want to sell to make it appear like the perfect home for a prospective buyer, or it could be setting up a dining room table with seasonal linens, burning candles and using real flowers to make an appealing setting for a holiday dinner. I’m taking the word staging and exploring it in the context of a retail shop or showroom. This is where I think staging is at its best, and also can be at its worse. In the retail environment, staging can be handled in several ways and with many thought processes. Let’s explore some of them.

Stage a Shop. Staging a shop to look inviting and welcoming is not hard to do. It takes the eye of a shopper. This is when you can look into a shop without really going inside and decide in the first 10 seconds whether it is worth your time or not to go and look further. In staging a shop, many retailers add items outside their door that will get the customers from their car to the door. From there, the customers will peek inside and decide if they want to even check any further.

Think about a Real Stage. When the curtain goes up, the stage places you in the mood to watch the performance. The stage is awash in color, music, vivid displays and moving objects; now the story begins. Walking into a shop has all those same exciting qualities. So staging your shop means giving your customers this anticipation of what is ahead and around that corner. Stage the outside and the space right inside the door to encourage them to dive in deeper. Once customers spot that one item that draws them in, the interest is there. It might be gentle familiar music that pulls them in, the pop of colors in a window display, or something that moves like a water fountain or a bundle of bouncing balloons.

Up-Stage Each Display. To up-stage in a retail shop is to make the next display around the corner better than the last one just passed. When you up-stage your last performance, that is a really good thing! You set your customers on a journey that starts all sorts of new thought processes and new ideas forming as they see what is ahead. This up-staging is important in many ways. You want to add to their baskets, and by them finding something new and unique at the next turn you have the stage all set. If they find the same merchandise on shelf after shelf, no matter how cleverly set up, the search is over. That set of three elves that pulled them into the shop are special; finding that same elf later on in the store makes it unimportant and turns down the level of enthusiasm. Be careful not to overdo merchandise, even if you have three dozen elves to sell. Break the habit of thinking “more is better.” No, less is better! The drive to empty the entire box and set out all the merchandise at the same time is a habit not easily broken; many shops fall into this. Set out only a few items at a time to build excitement and value in the product; you can always replace them as they sell out. It will take a bit more time on the shopkeeper’s part to have to fill spots as the sales go, but what a problem to have! Customers will no longer feel that they found that one special item that just has to go home with them if the items are all over the store.

Highlight Center Stage. Close your eyes and visualize the center stage. It is the focus of the entire stage, and it is where all the main action takes place. Center stage needs to be perfect, as it’s where your eye rest the most. Stand in the center of your doorway and look at the first impression your store and checkout counter make. Is the floor dirty, tags bent, countertop cluttered, signs dingy, old merchandise out? If this is the center stage customers see when they enter your shop, you aren’t going to have very excited customers that want to look around. So what should be at center stage? First off, it should be the new seasonal merchandise. One thing that I hear shopowners say is that they still have inventory to sell so they aren’t buying now. Wrong answer! Your customers are smart and they remember last year’s inventory no matter how cleverly you set it up. Your center stage needs to be all new: new colors, new merchandise, new displays, all cleverly placed to attract the eye. If the center stage is not set up right, your eyes will not go to the left and right with any excitement.

The center stage needs to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. Don’t turn out the light at the end of the day without walking the entire route your customers walked all day. Straighten up merchandise, fill in bare spots, maybe rearrange a space to look a bit new, and always leave the floor spotless and bags ready for when you open the next day. A hurried shopkeeper is not something that is appealing to a customer. You want to be ready for success the minute you open the door.

Don’t Forget Back Stage. Back stage is where props are kept. A holding ground for all the things that are needed on center stage. That means that extra inventory is out in the back stage of your shop, not on the shop floor in a box waiting to be unpacked. Extra merchandise should be easy to retrieve and well labeled so if you need to fill a spot on a shelf you can easily find an appropriate item back stage. A well-organized back stage is as important as center stage. The back stage is where you would keep your coat, your lunch, your extra things. These do not need to be out on center stage. This is where any messy bags, extra flyers, rubbish, anything extra, is kept out of sight. Props that you use once in a while are kept here not stuffed into a corner out front because it is there. Over crowding is not appealing to anyone. Once a space is allowed to be crowded, it takes days to get it back; constantly pruning your space will always keep it neat and pleasant. A good rule is to walk nowhere without something in your hands that goes somewhere else!

Lastly, Take a Standing Ovation. Now that you have set your stage from the front to the back, created a center stage that is popping with new merchandise and creative displays, and are keeping the place neat and tidy, it’s time to sit back and enjoy the applause! You earned it, and you will see the success in your register every day.