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GENERAL NEWS www.kitchenwarenews.com n AUGUST 2018 n KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW 3 General News Tips for Avoiding the Retail Apocalypse providing an entertaining experience, and pampering your customers, Gracon said. You can focus on just one of these areas, but your messages will be stronger if you can manage to work in two or all three of these ideas. Then, you will want to make sure that you're also executing these messages in your stores, starting with training your staff to reinforce your messaging as they interact with your customers. You can focus your marketing messages on your customers' self-images by thinking more about who your customers are and why they'll buy f rom you, as opposed to describing the merchandise you're trying to sell to them. W hile some of your customers will tell you that they've just dropped in for a new whisk or a mango tool, the subtext behind that is likely that they want your help to feel like they're successful in their kitchen. When your messaging uses a tag line like "You can do it. We'll help you learn how," or "You don't have to be a gourmet chef to have the right tools," or "Make your kitchen as unique as you are," you're appealing to their self- images and feeding the emotional needs that will keep them coming back to you, Gracon said. You can also use tag lines like these as training provocations when you're talking with your staff or as topics for blog posts or newsletter articles. " You need to have execution in the store that reinforces what the customer expects based on your marketing," Gracon said. "The majority of effective advertising is around self-image. Make sure you're targeting self-image.... W hat 's the emotional driver for the purchase decision?" Leverage an entertainment strategy by ensuring that your customers are going to enjoy their visit to your store. One way to do this would be to create a scavenger hunt that allows customers to find things in your store, either new items or things that they didn't even know existed. "I was delighted when I first discovered a cherr y pitter device. It's that discover y, that adventure, a retailer can bring to people by revealing things customers don't know are out there," Gracon said. "It 's about the treasure hunt. You never know what you're going to find in the store, and that's fun." Providing expert advice is another way to entertain your customers while they're in your store. So is a demonstration or a sampling event. "Successful companies are emphasizing that they 're interesting or fun," Gracon said. Take a look at your sales process and see if you can identify ways of making your customers feel pampered. That might mean assembling a few gift baskets to display in your store during the holiday season, so that customers who are pressed for time will know that they can just run into your store and pick up a quick gift during their lunch hour or on their way home f rom work. Maybe they ' ll even decide to get a gift for themselves. Or see if you can find ways to convey the message that the products that you offer might be an indulgence that your shoppers really deserve. Then make sure that you're doing your best to make their check-out process easy and fast. "Anytime you're thinking about making a change, you should ask, 'Will it make the experience more fun for the customer?'" Gracon said. "It's always got to be about the customer and the customer experience." Providing an entertaining experience in the store gives people a chance to feel they've been pampered," he added. "If they have so much fun at the store, they can congratulate themselves for knowing something that they didn't know before – to shop at your store!" KN (cont. from Page 1) BY LORRIE BAUMANN Ellembee makes a line of cotton tea towels decorated with sayings that are laugh-out- loud funny. (I'm so grateful for my children. Without them, I never would've known how great wine goes with chicken nuggets.) At retail prices from $12 to $14, they make great gifts. The towels are the brainchild of Lisa Wiley, Ellembee's President, who started her company in Michigan after being laid off from her job as a bedding designer in 2008. She started by screen-printing women's tee shirts, expanding into other clothing items and then jewelry. Tea towels and coasters didn't come along until about three years ago, after she saw some tea towels with sayings on them at a craft fair. "We can screen print, and we have funny ideas," she thought to herself, and then she went home and ordered some blank towels in several different sizes and started working on some prototypes. (So, how do I stop eating chips and salsa? Do they run out, or do I die, or what?) After looking at those, the team settled on a size that's about 25 inches by 26 inches. " We decided that looks best with the size of type that we wanted to use. We wanted something that was pretty big, so that it would be usable," she said. At first, some of the towels were adorable while others attempted comedy. (I'm outdoorsy in that I like drinking on patios.) Funny sold better. "We ran in that direction and never looked back," Wiley said. While Ellembee still makes the tee shirts that started it all, the funny tea towels now comprise about 70 percent of Wiley's business. The towels are made of 100 percent cotton in a cream color with black print. (I wonder if my cat would think I'm too clingy if it ever saw how many of its pictures are on my Facebook page.) They're hand-printed in Ellembee's 2,000-square-foot warehouse in Wixom, Michigan with an eco-friendly water- based textile ink that's durable enough to survive hundreds of washings. The sayings – 130 different ones as of the time this went to print – are a collaborative effort among the four or five people at work there on any given day. "Our customers sometimes tell us funny things. It 's kind of just a big collaboration," Wiley said. "We love making them, and it's honestly so fun to be where people are selling them because women are just cracking up. It makes it a fun place to work – that's for sure." (Everyone's all like, "This wine pairs well with brie and lobster." And I'm all like, "Which one pairs well with pizza rolls?") New collections come out twice a year and generally include 15 to 20 new designs. The next collection is due out in January. "I design them as I go, and then the lines come out in January and in June when the summer line comes out," Wiley said. "We do offer the display ladder free to stores (including free freight on the ladder) for orders of $250 or more, but what really sells the towels is the funny sayings. They really do just sell themselves with how funny they are." For more information, email info@ellembee.com or visit www.ellembee.com. KN A Good Thing to Do in the Morning is Not Talk to Me

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