August/September 2010

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By Clare Ann Adrian etal nostalgia signs kiosked in front of a rug gallery, wooden versions arrayed throughout a jewelry shop, a compact poster display for convenience stores, pens arranged atop a silver tray filled with sand or dried beans, oh the unexpected placement of items that can and do work. If it strikes a chord, generates an impulsive response, is

easily accessible, sales happen. From signs and posters to pens and pencils, retailers are finding how best to expose saleable features.

"Signs go high where everything else seems to need to be at eye level to sell quickly,� is what Manager/Buyer Chris Graham at Tuacahn Gift Gallery in Ivins, Utah says she loves about signs. She adds, �Signs can go over the top of the door and over the top of your cabinets so it�s a great fill in thing.� In country colors painted wood or ornate tapestry, the signs popping out at customers from every angle of the gallery reflect attitudes or thoughts to make people feel good.

A nostalgically rendered �Open Soon� sign is positioned next to the entry to Southwest Sensations in Coral springs, Florida where Manager Terry Manney says he juxtaposes signs virtually everywhere. Some of the Old West Signs he carries are in the window so people walking by can read them. �We like to mix it up quite a bit, says Manney, �all throughout the store. They stand out because it�s something to read.�

Cheryl Bennett gives customers something to read in the dressing room in addition to hanging signs throughout her Blazin�Saddles Western Wear Store in Cave Creek, Arizona. Bennett maintains it�s much easier to make a decision to buy if signs can be read directly rather than having to flip through a stack of them leaning up against a wall.

Metal brand name signs have made their way from the past into reproductions by Kool Collectibles LLC, in Bessemer City, North Carolina supplying various mass merchants, museum gift shops and flea marketers with the choices that hang ultimately in dens, children and family rooms, business foyers and offices. Some are even displayed on a roving kiosk in front of or inside a military-based rug gallery in Nevada. Owner Don Fereday says there is a market for anything, especially for people who like to collect in the old vintage look. Fereday provides retailers with the option of a cardboard backer to mount his round or rectangular signs to hang on a peg on the wall, a turnstile or end cap. Big sellers are the arrow-shaped Corona and �Pepsi sold for 5 cents here,� the authentic looking molded Corona or Pepsi bottle or bottle cap shaped signs.

The search never need end empty-handed with an eyecatching impulse buy readily available at the counter like novelty pens. Penholder racks under Millie�s Hallmark Gift and Collectible�s counter hold packaged scented gel pens, various animal pens and Hello, Kitty pens and pencils. Buckets containing butterfly pens and pompom laden ones are easily accessible on under-counter shelving. Assistant Manager Sharon Estevez says lizard pens do well with visitors to the Southwest at this Phoenix, Arizona area store.

The novelty pen is also the impulse counter purchase at Stacy�s Hallmark in Phoenix. The going thing, says owner Stacy Gibson, is the pen that has some glitzy attraction to light up or has fur attached. If there�s growth, says Stacy, that�s were it is. She also carries Stylus� Yahtzee Game Pens and D&M Merchandising�s inexpensive smiley face pens that light up and sport feathers.

Tampa, Florida-based Long Shot Posters is able to quell retailer concerns about big bulky displays with its point of purchase poster display. Its appeal, explains Owner Arthur Leduc, is a judicious use of space. The compact-sized container houses 120 units of the long skinny format Long Shot poster in a 121.2 inch wide, 131.2 inch deep, 44 inch high display that enables small convenience stores, gift shops, beach stores, places that usually don�ft have room for posters, to bring them in without taking up much room. "They are using a little over 1 square foot of their store to merchandise posters which is unheard of," says Leduc, who has been turning out a mixture of home decor, food and wine, fantasy and motorcycle artwork since 1991.

The Long Shot focus now has settled on the 5 to 26 year old demographic, leaning towards the female. Leduc notes, "There is a trend toward more acceptance of the edgier stuff of what we are producing, for the teenage boys and the tween market, which is becoming the strongest market in the poster industry."

Signs that do well for Tuacahn gift gallery in St. George, Utah are those that make people laugh or say what they would say. Manager/Buyer Graham laughs, reiterating a favorite saying upon a tapestry sign that reads, �I chose the road less traveled and now I don�t know where the hell I am.� Some of the wooden signs read merely, �dream� or �families are forever,� and other messages from the heart.

Manney says Southwest Sensations patrons like that verbal information. �Given the written word, they can just look at it, take it for what it says, instead of having to think why the artist painted something a certain way.� Manney added there is a sign to appeal to anyone who might be looking for a sign. There�s the bright Pueblo Chilies Company eyecatcher and the humorous �danger-friendly dog, extremely mean wife,� which he doesn�t sell too much to husbands. Since these are nostalgia items, misspelled words on them add to their authenticity.

Being a Southwest merchandise store, anything that refers to that area is a big seller. Manney reflects, �People

A poster display from Long Shot Posters. The display comes with 120 assorted posters, 15 each of eight designs, or can be custom loaded.

that like what we sell at Southwest Sensations, like the Old West feel and like to carry it with them.� The land markers �Tombstone Cemetery� or �Deadwood � are among those that appeal to the diverse crowd that floods the area in the winter season.

Pens are a consistent sell at the Tuacahn Gift Gallery with the name of the Tuacahn Amphitheatre and Center for the Arts embossed on them. Manager Graham realizes they wouldn�t do as well if the store were not in a tourist destination. Graham advises against just �sticking them in a mug on the counter,� but rather displaying them inventively, such as on top of a dish of simple dried beans, rice or the sparkly gravel used in sandblasting.

Dropping the name of the gift receiver onto a pen set while the customer continues to shop is another drawing card at the Fiesta Mall store, Things Remembered in Mesa, Arizona. Manager Tara Cannizzo noted that the engraving, applied to any of the brands the store carries, the Waterman, Reflections, Cross, Sheaffer, and Sensa, takes about an hour and is a popular office gift inducement?

(Clare Ann Adrian writes from Columbia, Mo.)