Take a second to imagine your local perfume store at your local shopping mall, and then compare it to how the Apple Store looks. It’s quite a jump, isn’t it? But it’s perhaps the best illustration that there is out there. Think about it, stores were more utilitarian until just a few years ago, something that is still clearly found in most grocery stores.
Parallels with the smartphone industry
Let’s take a look at how phones are sold a few years ago to get a better understanding of why appearance matters. Phone stores are a great way to understand this because unlike Apple, other phone manufacturers don’t pay that much attention to how their stores look and feel as long as it serves its main purpose; to sell products. This utilitarian view of stores held by companies is one of the things that ultimately gave apple the chance to revolutionize the retail industry.
Apple got it right
Regardless of your opinions about Apple products, you have to admit that Apple stores don’t quite feel like a store, at least not in the traditional sense. Take a Lok at how they lay their products out, for instance. It’s easy to see that they’re proud of their products, and it clearly shows. You see, phone manufacturers tend to put dummy phones on display rather than showcasing their actual product, something that was common until very recently when companies started learning from Apple. Apple, on the other hand, does things a little differently, not only do they showcase their actual products, but customers are also allowed to interact with their product, a long way away from the concept of putting things behind a glass wall in fear of theft.
Why appearance matters
So how does this relate to perfume stores? Quite directly, actually. You see, when you go to a perfume store and you see the utilitarian principle of having the store laid out in cramped rows of shelves, it becomes much less attractive, since having things sit on a cramped shelf often makes things not appear as valuable as they really are. One way to mitigate this is to add space and arrange the products in such a way that it looks more like a showcase, rather than a shelf.
Let your customers experience your product
Another way to see it is to let the customers interact with the product. Interaction is often overlooked when it comes to perfumes since there is an understandable level of fear that the customers will try on a certain fragrance and immediately leave the store. But this shouldn’t be the case, when customers are allowed to experience the product themselves, there’s a much higher chance that they will actually make a purchase rather than just window shopping.
Ultimately though, it’s very important to keep your store tidy and clean, as nothing says more about a brand than how the store that houses it appears to the intended audience. Another thing brand owners can do is to make sure that the store reflects what their brand stands for, making sure to feature things that represent the brand’s identity to potential patrons. Ultimately though, people can come to love a particular brand simply by having experienced what their retail store is like, making sure to keep your store as tidy and as clean as possible, as well as arranging it in an aesthetically pleasing way is the best way to give your customers a great experience.