Brand stores: Cross

Cross pens opened its first store in Harvard Square in Cambridge in April of 2004. A second store opened in a suburb of Boston in November.

Cross stores have given the company an opportunity to display their products in an ideal way. Its consumers have a chance to interact with the brand in a bright, modern environment, and the merchandise is easy to explore, presented colorfully and neatly. Items such as stylish journals and notebooks, bookends and desk accessories add to the mix, and pads of paper are available for people to experience the pens. In addition, the stores offer a perfect combination of classic and contemporary, such as pouches for an Ipod and bags for laptops.

The retail ventures also offer an opportunity for the company to test and sell new products. For example, the Kimono pen, originally introduced in the Cross stores in Harvard Square, was so popular that the company made it available on its web site.

Brand-specific stores are here to stay. What have you done to capitalize on the best brands in your store?

Marvin Traub and Bloomingdales

Marvin Traub made Bloomingdale's the "greatest retail show on Earth" during his more than 20 years as a top executive at the department store. He used celebrities and grand events to generate inexpensive publicity. Under Traub's watch, Bloomingdale's devoted more of its resources to public relations than any department store ever had at the time.

Traub created the concept of dividing the selling floor into boutiques and used this setting to showcase then-emerging designers such as Yves Saint Laurent. He also brought a fashion element to home furnishings, housewares and cosmetics.

Lighting and music in retail stores

The Marketing Eye blog has an interesting entry about the use of indirect lighting and classical music in retail stores. A good ambience is certainly essential to the image and performance of your marketing efforts.

6 steps to get good PR

Kim Gordon at Entrepreneur.com offers 6 steps to getting publicity for your business. This is sound how-to advice that any business can use. Check it out.

Sexy advertising: the Bowflex grandmother and the Baby Boomers

Bowflex is a "home gym" brand owned by the famous fitness equipment company Nautilus. Bowflex equipment is heavily promoted through television advertising and sold direct via 800-number. Their most famous ad featured Donna McClure, a 50 year old grandmother. Ms. McClure wore a skimpy bikini and sported a body that many women half her age would kill for.

As the huge Baby Boomer market ages, there will certainly be more advertisers creating sexy ads using age-appropriate models. Boomers are well known to be highly resistant to the idea of aging ... yet ads targeting them should use models that are Boomers themselves. Enter the sexy 50-year old models!

How does this ad do with my 3 tests for evaluating sexy ads? After seeing the ad, you definitely remember it was for Bowflex (she's the "Bowflex grandmother"!). The ad is hot enough to be literally remarkable - the ad generated hundreds of blog entries and newspaper mentions. Is the ad a one-off titillation or part of a whole brand identity? I'd say the latter ... Bowflex has always used fit/sexy models in its ads. Ms. McClure is just the first older one.

A product that can put a sexy-fit-young body on a grandmother is certain to capture the Baby-Boomers' attention. A scantily-clad model is relevant to the product advertised ... they're selling better bodies. The only possible objection I have to the ad is that Ms. McClure appears to have had a face-lift and a boob-job. Maybe she hasn't, but the appearance is what matters. The "fake" look seems to upset some women -- and who wants to upset the target audience?

A most unusual retailer

Garagiste sells wine. But not in the usual way. It began as a co-op about five years ago. Wines are sold one at a time by e-mail only, and the selection process for each wine depends entirely on Jon Rimmerman's taste.

He qualifies his offerings by subjecting them to rigorous scrutiny. In order for Garagiste to sell it, he explains, a wine must fit two or three spokes of criteria: "It has to be best of its type we can find in the world, issues of provenance have to be clear, and we have to be able to sell it at the lowest prices in the U.S."

Besides the steady stream of e-mail offers, Garagiste subscribers have access to an online blog, a drop-in retail space, an annual blow-out "garage sale" and exclusive wine dinners at trendy restaurants nationwide, all at remarkably reasonable prices.

The company is well-known among wine enthusiasts across the country. It has a niche and a strong brand identity based on product expertise and exclusivity.

Retail marketing isn't a staid, mature industry. You can be as innovative as you like ... in fact a well-implemented unusual business model has a better chance for success than just another storefront.

Retail success: Michael's Fine Clothes

In 1905, Theodore Roosevelt was president, Albert Einstein introduced his Special Theory of Relativity, Greta Garbo was born in Stockholm, and a young Russian immigrant named Michael Novorr opened a business in downtown Kansas City, selling everything from diamond engagement rings to shotguns to a few men's suits.

Michael's survived on regular downtown foot traffic for years, but when most stores relocated to the suburbs in the late 1960s and '70s, the loyal customers made it a destination location and saved them the high overhead of stores in malls.

“About 95 percent of the people coming through the door will buy something; in a mall about 95 percent are just looking,” Eugene Novorr said.

Michael's has expanded four times and serves three generations in its original location. It offers suits; fine clothing; casual wear, including jeans, accessories and outwear; and formalwear for men in a wide variety of sizes, along with boy's suits.

The store is also known for its charity golf tournament, Michael's Invitational, which has raised more than $1 million for such charities as Children's Mercy Hospital since the mid-1970s.

Retail marketing: sexy sells

A model put on a prom dress wrong and created a sensation. The dress became more revealing and was soon a runaway success. Just goes to show that sexy sells ... especially to teens.

Retail marketing: publicity

Local recognition is grand. It's the stuff of which all successful small businesses are made. But when a mom-and-pop shop receives a positive nod in a national publication, get ready for the phone to ring off the hook.

That's what's happened at Legacy Chocolates since owner and chocolatier Mike Roberts' handmade truffles were prominently featured in the March 7 edition of Newsweek.

And it's not just telephone orders that have been pouring in. As of Thursday morning, more than 50 people from coast to coast decided they needed to sample some of Legacy's deliciously distinctive wares.

The flurry of activity comes on the heels of a City Pages article about Roberts' expansion into the Twin Cities market with the opening last November of a new Legacy Chocolates store and coffee shop on Marshall Avenue in St. Paul.

Sexy ads: 3 tests and the Reef girls

Sex sells. Sexy ads are attention grabbing ... a well executed sexy ad stands out from the media crowd. Sexy ads also generate great word-of-mouth. People will spread the word about titillating ads, and nothing is more powerful in marketing than free buzz.

What makes a good sexy ad?

In the classic Ogilvy on Advertising, David Ogilvy wrote:

The first advertisement I ever produced showed a naked woman. It was a mistake, not because it was sexy, but because it was irrelevant to the product - a cooking stove.

The test is relevance. To show bosoms in a detergent advertisement would not sell the detergent. Nor is there any excuse for the sexy girls you sometimes see draped across the hoods in automobile advertisements. On the other hand, there is a functional reason to show nudes in advertisements for beauty products.

Relevance is a good start, but I suggest 3 tests for evaluating sexy ads:

1. Do you remember what the ad sold? Or do you only remember the sex? There's a car ad airing on television that features a beautiful woman in a very tight skirt. She picks up her keys, struts outside to her car, and presses the gas pedal with her very high heels. I've seen the ad several times, but I have no idea what car is advertised.
2. Is the ad "hot" enough to be remarkable (literally)? Good sexy ads generate blog entries and water-cooler talk. Bad ones are as easily forgettable as any other ads.
   
3. Is the sexy ad part of a whole brand identity or just a one-off titillation? Reef is a world leader in beach sandals and such ("surf-inspired footwear"). The company's success is closely linked with the Reef girls, although a girl in a tiny bikini in a surfwear ad is hardly remarkable. The remarkable thing about Reef ads is that the girls have their back to the camera, and the ad theme carried on year after year. Years of repetition of ads featuring the nearly naked rear-ends of surfer babes have fixed the brand in the mind of teenagers. Reef "owns" the perky-butt sexy-ad-niche.

You too can make powerful sexy ads like Reef. Just follow the 3 rules. I'll post more on sexy ads in a week.

Affordable fashion spells retail business success

The next collection from haute couture designer Karl Lagerfeld is not going to appear in exclusive boutiques, but at the Stockholm-based mass-market retailer H&M. Has Lagerfeld abandoned his traditional high-end clientele in favor of the great unwashed, who will be able to wear his tops, dresses and turtleneck sweaters this fall?

Not at all, says the revered 65-year-old designer with a penchant for ponytails, sunglasses and deep, dark, tropical tans. He's just moving with the tide as he sees it, taking his talent to where the fashion current's flowing.

"Because people who buy Chanel and other expensive things buy there, too," he said in an interview. "For me, this is fashion today. People wear t-shirts and jeans with exceptional things."

Starting in November, Lagerfeld's small line of clothing and accessories he is designing, called "Karl Lagerfeld for H&M," will appear on store racks at the retailer that specializes in serving up a non-stop stream of fashions priced for the comman man.

H&M, which opened its first shop in a Stockholm suburb in 1947, has hit fashion gold with its strategy of providing the latest fashion at inexpensive prices, with store collections that change at dizzying speeds. It has 991 stores in 19 countries. Cheap doesn't necessarily mean low-quality in this day and age.