Attending the Denver Mart is not just an opportunity to identify upcoming market trends and place orders for new merchandise to carry, but also a chance for retailers to grow personally through seminars about various aspects of the retail business.

Merchandise Magic … Three for One by Laura Lee Ullrich

At this show we picked two training sessions to attend in between appointments with vendors. The first was Merchandise Magic … Three for One by Laura Lee Ullrich, an experienced retailer from Montana. Laura’s presentation was on display merchandising. Very much like anything else, the first glance at a store makes an impression and if the display is a disorganized mess, the customer may simply chose not to shop there. First impressions in retail can very easily make or break a sale and those first impressions are not of the sales people. Those first impressions come from the window display or a first glance inside a store. We’ve all been to stores that immediately attract you by their display and to stores where peeling paint and debris are the highlights of the display window.

Laura’s presentation included a single set of merchandise and focused on three different ways to display it, augmenting the display with seasonal items that made the merchandise attractive and current. It was an interesting and innovative way to look at displays, but as we were walking out of the presentation, we were joking that this was a lesson on repackaging last season’s unsold merchandise for the upcoming season.

Getting Started with Constant Contact by Zak Barron

The second seminar was by Constant Contact’s Zak Barron, titled Getting Started with Constant Contact. Zak spoke about the benefits of using Constant Contact, an internet mailing list solution, to stay in touch with customers. This was really a lengthy infomercial about what Constant Contact has to offer and how it’s used, complete with a software demonstration. We’ve seen Zak speak about social media in retail a couple of years ago and it was a very sharp, well thought out presentation. This round did not come close to matching the existing expectations.

Seminars, by their nature, come with hits and misses, but it’s important to remember that retail is a much diversified field and specifics are not universal across all retail businesses. One of the important takeaways from these sessions is to think critically about how the business is being run and what efficiencies can be found to make it a better place.

As a rule, customer response is the key benchmark to running a great business. Customers have a way of telling retailers what works and what doesn’t. The goal for retailers is to learn to listen to their customers and deliver the services and products that customers want. It’s a very old lesson in the retail world, but one that is always topical and always important to retail success. We do believe this message and our goal is to respond to every single comment and concern from our customers. It’s a promise that we have to keep in order to continue to serve all of you.

[whohit]2014-02-26 Denver Mart part 3 – Training Opportunities[/whohit]