Successful Examples

A reader in California wrote to tell us that she objected to our selection of 2002 Retailer Excellence Awards store design finalists, which appeared in the July issue. She felt that small stores like hers (in the 900-to-1,500-square-foot range) were not being served by Gifts & Decorative Accessories' coverage of more affluent specialty retailers with bigger stores and budgets. Our four store design finalists, located in California, Michigan, and Florida, ranged in size from 1,700 square feet to more than 5,000, and their annual gross sales were between $600,000 and $2.5 million. No doubt about it, they are successful retailers. But their success is based on the hard work they've put into their businesses over the years, much like the effort we are sure our California reader puts into hers. They are all independently or family owned, and their owners are intimately involved in day-to-day operations, from working the cash desk to shopping the trade shows. They also started out small. One has moved locations once and expanded his space three times in the 17 years he has been in business. Another couple started their stationery business in a 1,900-square-foot space in 1996, and their success enabled them to move across the street into a 3,750-square-foot store five years later. Two of the finalists hired professional architects to design their new stores, while the other two put their own skills to work. We believe that these stories should resonate with all independent specialty retailers, regardless of store size or annual sales, and that's why we selected them.

Our West Coast reader might feel more in tune with the finalists in the Promotion and Visual Merchandising categories, whose stories appeared in the August and September issues. Four of them operate stores ranging in size from 650 to 1,300 square feet. They, too, had creative solutions, from producing a professional-looking newsletter with limited funds to using the store's ceiling to display merchandise — ideas that can be copied or expanded on by other retailers, regardless of size or budget.

We will continue to present more stories and solutions selected from the many entries we received for the 2002 Retailer Excellence Awards competition. After all, why try to reinvent the wheel when all you have to do is take a look at what some of your fellow retailers are doing?