A window display should bring attention to a particular product or group of products in your store. However, sometimes the product is just not big, colourful or attractive enough to catch the customer’s eye and keep it―it needs help to tell its story, which is where a prop comes in.
As most stores have no or very limited budget, where do they get these props for little or no money? According to visual merchandising expert Martin M Pegler, the answer is ‘beg, borrow and credit card’. Here are some of his tips:
1. Let’s start with ‘stuff’ that you may have in the store or in your closet. New or used cartons and crates can say anything from import, new arrivals, open stock, to ready for delivery. Brooms and shovels are synonymous with clearance, swept away with…, getting ready for…. Ladders of all kinds and sizes are a great way to elevate an assortment of small products—like stepping up in the home fashion world or making the grade. Planks set horizontally between ladders can become shelving units for sales promotions. Assorted boxes can be risers or platforms, or spiraling stairways. They can become building blocks and a big city skyline in miniature.
2. Now, let’s consider some of your neighbours as ‘sources’. Furniture stores can be fruitful and plentiful with props such as beach chairs, bentwood chairs, ice cream and opera chairs, folding chairs and director chairs, and tables, all kinds and sizes of tables. Raid a toy store for stuffed animals, model railroad trains, planes and racing cars and building blocks. There are go-carts, supermarket shopping carts or anything from sporting goods, hunting and camping goods stores. Visit the garden supply centre for flower pots, rakes and hoes, lawn mowers, seed spreaders, packets of seeds, picket fences, plants and bushes in burlap bags, picnic tables and benches, beach and sun umbrellas, garden and patio furniture, barbecue grills and hibachis, firewood and logs.
3. The travel office is a great source for posters and giveaways from airlines and tourist offices, from foreign trade bureaus. See the importers in town who are looking for a place to show their wares. Luggage shops and all those things that say travel, vacation and suggest movement and direction. There are treasures in antique shops and dollar stores. Try building supply houses for bricks, cement blocks, terra cotta blocks, gravel and rain drains, even the bathroom sink, copper and brass pipes, joints and elbows. Try the scrap metal dealers or the galleries, art shops and craft stores; those might welcome some extra exposure.
4. Explore the art schools for young artists waiting for a showcase, which could be a store window. Imagine the magic and music of a window filled with a display of military band instruments, gleaming golden, and all courtesy of the local music store. And, being musical: collections of music boxes, music stands to hold sheets of music, copy cards, small home or cooking accessories, a metronome to suggest a timely move in cooking or baking, score sheets to play up a black and white sonata for spring.
5. Piles of old newspapers can be as timely as the headline on the top sheet. A real refrigerator or ice-maker can set a cooling pattern in a merchandise presentation. A water cooler, a desk and some office, metal files are all it takes to make an office setting—and they all come from the office supply house. Store shopping bags and boxes make marvelous sales and clearance displays.
6. Don’t pass up garagesales, white elephant sales, an auction or a house razing. There can be dozens of window display and display props in all that torn down mess. All you have to do is learn to see the glitter in the glass, and figure out how to turn brass into gold. Don’t look at things for what they are, but what they can be. Buy classics, buy things that can be reused and reused, and always look different and do different things. Buy things that can be repainted, re-trimmed and/or rearranged. When a house is being torn down, go prospecting.
7. There are doors, mantles, railings, architectural details and even old bricks. A window frame canbe used as a surrealistic, architectural frame, or realistically curtained and draped to create a vignette setting. A painted landscape could be inserted behind the gaping frame, or blinds drawn over the rectangle with maybe a slat or two askew to provoke some passerby’s interest. The outlined window could become a framework for a Mondrian-like presentation of merchandise and accessories with some coloured pin-up panels placed behind. In an open-back window, the suspended frame will supply the background for the product as well as the desired see-through. Maybe a few flowerpots sitting on the ledge could be added for a seasonal accent.
8. Imagine what can be done with a partial row of seats from an old movie theatre that has given way to the ‘swing of the iron ball’. Think of all the vignette settings those seats could be featured in. Old, not necessarily antique, curio cabinets and closets, strange and odd pieces of furniture with doors, drawers and/or shelves, can be revived and rejuvenated quickly with a coat of paint. Investigate what is available from local theatres, theatre groups and movie houses. There can be a display in the king size poster for a current movie or a play, ballet, concert or opera that is passing through your city. It can add a touch of culture, and more than a smattering of what is current and special in town. How about traffic signs, road signs, bus and train signs? You never know what can be had for the asking—till you ask!
