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Shelf talkers at the Rocky Mountain National Park’s
store allow staff to communicate with visitors about
new titles and recommended and local interest items.
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o be in the presence of wilderness or distinct
land formations, shaped by forces of nature
millions of years ago,
or to walk through the passageways
and rooms of homes once
occupied by our nation’s leaders
or cultural icons, produces
goose bumps. Then to take
away some token of the visit to
reminisce that, yes, I really was
there, completes the revered
moment.
Such experiences require
the concerted efforts of organizations
such as the Association
of Partners for Public
Lands (APPL), and the National Park Service, which
are dedicated to preservation, education, and continuity
between these hallowed wonders and the visitor
center retail outlets. The mission statement of
the sites serves as a guideline to develop a retail outlet
philosophy for product line purchases and their
contextual layout in the stores. When fixtures concur,
just the right effect is achieved. When vendors
help, it is priceless.
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Rocky Mountain National Park Retail Manager Dale
Friedrich with the shop’s new T-shirt display. This custom
fixture holds the shirts by long-sleeve and shortsleeve
styles, and by size. T-shirts are also displayed on
the wall and on hangers to the right of the display to
keep customers from unrolling the shirts in the display.
Also pictured is the Your True Nature display that
stocks “Advice From” products including postcards,
bookmarks and gift packs with the sayings “Advice
From a Tree,” “Advice From a Moose,” and others.
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The Rocky Mountain Nature Association
(RMNA) is committed to National Park Service
(NPS) goals of preservation and visitor education. In
the Estes Park, Colo.-based visitor center store, the
scenic panorama outside continues
along the walls and into
the aisles by application of an
overall face out placement of
merchandise, including the
biggest selling category, books.
Retail Operations Manager
Shane Ring noted, “We run
with the vendors investment
in their covers and the fronts
of all their products.” The contribution
of their expertise has
made all the difference in
showcasing merchandise conducive
to Ring’s goal of convenience for visitors.
Like a first meeting, said Ring, “Five minutes may be
all we have with them. Concentrating on what we
know works and not cramming everything in, it
comes back to the vendor, no matter what technique
we use. We have to make it as easy, orderly, and
uncluttered as possible for them to find what they
need and move on.”
The flexibility of a row of 4-foot-by-4-foot slatwall-backed bookshelves custom
designed to accommodate the
varied product that arrives
from year to year is the crowning
achievement of partnering
with Impact Photographics.
Currently, visitors can visually
scan book jackets along the
shelves. At any time, the
desired number of shelves can
be pulled and hooks or acrylic
holders attached to the slatwall
to secure nonbook items. Slots
on top of each bookshelf provide
an additional place for
Image Photographics wares to
be seen besides on their spinners,
alleviating shoppers
crowding around them.
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These new bookshelves at the Rocky Mountain
National Park store are multi-use, and the configuration
can be changed to suit the needs of the shop.
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Shelf talkers, the signs hung underneath popular
items, communicate extra snippets of information,
noting if items are ranger recommended, best sellers,
new titles, or of local interest.
Staff is instrumental, too, in improvising devices
that serve the purpose at hand. Retail Manager Dale
Friedrich’s idea of a bar extending from the side of
the shelving unit, curtails the tendency of shoppers
to rip open the bands encircling
the apparel items to find
their size. Now the number
one selling item, displayed on
the wall to plainly view the
design, one in each size, long
and short sleeve, is hanging on
the bar to try on, and T-shirt
bundles are stored in cubbies
to grab on the way to the
counter.
All the extra steps Ring has
taken so that visitors can see
and hear product before buying,
the customization and
working with vendors, have
paid off in sales increases of 22
percent over the last three
years. He provided a CD player,
Finley-Holiday stepped up
to provide TVs for watching DVDs, and the Hooray
Sport clothing line helped customize a poster display
for visitors to flip through. The vendors have been
instrumental in making the store look good, maintained
Ring. “They’re the experts, they helped
design, merchandise, and build.”
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Rocky Mountain National Park Retail Support
Specialist Michele Timbie photographed with the
shop’s new Impact Photographics display. The set-up
replaced a spinner that only allowed one shopper at a
time to get a limited view. The new display lets several
people see all of the products at once.
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Canyonlands Natural History Association assists
in the scientific and educational efforts of the
National Park Service, Bureau
of Land Management, and the
USDA Forest Service, agencies
that together oversee more
than 7.5 million acres of federal
land in southeast Utah and
the Four Corners Area. A new
visitor center store is underway
at the Island in the Sky District
of Canyonlands National
Park and the flagship store at
Arches National Park opened
three years ago.
The guiding principles for the set-up and operation
of the Arches store, which enjoys the highest volume
of visitation and sales of the Canyonland cluster,
are to not over-merchandise, and give shoppers
the physical and visual room to
have a good experience, said
Operations Manager Sam
Wainer. “Multiple facings lead
visitors toward park specific
items or those we’ve produced,
so if a visitor sees it in that
many places, thinks, ‘Maybe I
should have this.’ ”
The evident conscious
effort toward enough space for
shoppers to feel comfortable
elicits a gasp from some in the
industry that it is not used for
retail. Wainer’s retorted, “If
the husband has a place to rest while his wife shops
when he and the kids don’t want to, when it’s 100 degrees outside and nice and
cool inside, they’ll stay in-store
longer.”
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Displays from IKEA in a variety of shapes and sizes
capture the interest of shoppers at the Roosevelt
Vanderbilt Historical Association.
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The primary fixtures used
in the store are the 7-foot-tall
bookshelves, as well as slatwall.
Other freestanding displays tie
in the historical perspective of
the park. At the front of the
store, a 3-feet-tall wooden
wagon and cart replica draws
attention into the store and
features park specific items,
currently a book about the
park, a driving CD, and a parkproduced
calendar. A 42-inch
plasma flat screen TV mounted high on a back wall
draws attention from the visitor center desk to the
DVD section, which aids in
selling over 2,500 DVDs per
year, and adds color and movement
to the store, Wainer said.
He added, “Banners imprinted
with the various park logo
image designs hanging from
the 12-foot ceiling also provide
nice color, movement and continuity
of identity.”
Jane Muggli, executive
director, Theodore Roosevelt
Nature & History Association
in Medora, N.D., is delighted
to report on the changes of
two newly renovated stores,
with a third underway, after
30-plus years of the “same ol’ same ol’.”
Together, the three stores
gross $325,000. Considering
the guiding light of the mission
to support the park and
the interpretive activities, the
fact that the major product
category of the stores is books,
and operating within the context
of budget frugality and
limited space, the display presentation
of choice is face out,
primarily, on slatwall fixtures.
“You can’t judge a book by it’s cover but if nothing
else, covers sell, spine out titles are hard to find.
Space an issue, we sacrifice quantity for quality,
good titles that tell the story,” Muggli explained.
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Retail Operations Manager Shane Ring
of The Rocky Mountain Nature
Association (RMNA). Ring recognizes
that guests at the visitor center store are
pressed for time, and strives to create an
orderly and easy-to-shop environment.
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Space is used as cleverly and resourcefully as possible
after products are chosen. A review process is
in place to scrutinize product
choice to assure all maintain a
high level of interpretive
value. Muggli commented
that the privilege of being in
the park demands high standards
in content. “We take
great strides to try new product,
name dropped string bags
with fantastic interpretive
tags, recycled merchandise
made from post consumer
waste materials, to give messages
about the environment, the natural future
area and wildlife they’re looking at, and teach as
much as possible about the park and complete web
of all aspects of it.”
Plexiglass holders attached to custom-made spinning slatwall displays accommodate
the postcards and magnets supplied
by Impact Photographics, a great
supporter of the national parks,
Muggli said. Lacking endcap space,
other hangers or creative uses of
space are devised such as adding
items to the top of the spinners.
Staff got out the carpenter’s tools
and custom built fixtures that transformed
the kids’ area into a welcoming
corner for story times with kids.
Muggli notices visitors enjoying sitting
with their kids, reading books,
welcomed to a place to rest, peruse
the books to decide if they want to
purchase them, and the kids sit and
page through books. Wooden
benches and poster bins now flank
the Audubon Sound Birds tree fixture, which brings
it all together, Muggli said.
“I highly recommend a kids’ corner. A few benches
is all you need. A little fake greenery around it,
and it’s perfect.”
Two buildings, on one property, strikingly different,
require different techniques to bring out the
qualities descriptive of the era and people that
inhabited them. That put Kathi
Behnke, business manager, Roosevelt
Vanderbilt Historical Association,
Hyde Park, N.Y., into the position
of storyteller for both stores,
together earning $400,000 annually,
newly redone at the Vanderbilt
Mansion and the home of Eleanor
Roosevelt. To be true to the interpretation
that the NPS wants to
convey, Behnke worked cooperatively
with staff and curators to unearth
the interests, travels, and many
interesting facts about the site’s
original owners, details that become
memorable for visitors. “The objective
was providing a wide range of
merchandise selection and pricing
so that there’s something for everybody
if they choose, and a strong
educational component, teaching through what we
sell,” Behnke said.
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Modular fixtures from IKEA, formerly only a
home furnishing manufacturer, now also producing
small business and retail fixtures, provide an elegant
look to the Vanderbilt Mansion store, fashioned in
the correct time period, well-made, and great for
storage, Behnke said. They allow change of the
entire layout and appearance
of the store, accommodate new
products, the seasons, and the
story Behnke is telling. “It’s
more the museum shop we
were looking for versus just a
gift shop because of its clean,
simple lines, adding elegance
and requiring little care,” she
said. “We were lucky, the fixtures
mimic what’s in the room
and take advantage of its
height. It’s impressive, totally
glass on three sides, and has
that wow factor as people walk
in.”
At the other end of the spectrum fixtures built for the Roosevelt home, with
funds from a contracted
Save America’s Treasures
grant include bookcases
containing storage underneath.
Historically accurate
for the time period, the cabinets
mimic the cottage feel
of the original Val-Kill
showroom.
To portray the lives of
the original owners as dictated
by the Park Service,
Behnke creates small
vignettes built upon an
intricate idea. This year, an
entire portion of the
Vanderbilt store is dedicated
to vintage travel. “I just
start building my displays,
it could just be a book, one particular piece of
product, and start building out from that so it tells
the historically interpreted story of our product.
People walk in, stop, see what it is, pick things up,
read and look at them to under-stand our portrayal.”
NPS interpreters compose signs to accompany
product so visitors will probe for understanding
and ask questions on the tour. For example, the
many French products in
the store elucidate the fact
that Mrs. Vanderbilt was a
Francophile and loved
everything French, and the
cards invite related questions.
Behnke remarked,
“It’s amazing how responsive
people are to them.”
A fair trade room in the
Roosevelt store portrayed
the woman 40 years ahead
of the movement to purchase
from indigenous
peoples. When she traveled
abroad, she bought
directly from women and
children in villages, to pay
them a decent wage, and
gave away her purchases as gifts upon return.
Behnke is sure, “Eleanor Roosevelt would be very
pleased we’re supporting that kind of thing in the
world at that site. Visitors absolutely love to buy
and support fair trade. They love to take that kind
of thing away with them - and it improves their
tour.”
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