Creative

Imaginative merchants have all worked hard to turn rather ordinary items into extraordinary “must haves.” Just how alluring is your product line? And how will you keep luring your customers into your brand?

As retailers head into the critical back-to-school season, the industry's second-biggest selling period, they're using an array of new tools and deals to spur consumers to buy.

REI may be one of the best companies at turning shopping into an experience and turning customers into devoted patrons. That's because REI isn't merely a place to pick up parkas, tents or bikes. It's a store where customers can go to learn how to use a GPS device on a trail, figure out which local waterways offer the best kayaking for beginners and discover what to pack for a summit attempt on a 14,000-foot peak. It's a place where outdoor enthusiasts go to be inspired.

Many catalogers have merchants select the products for each two-page spread, then hand them to designers/copywriters to make them look and sound good. But that process can miss the middle step of analyzing how to make each two-page spread sell harder. Here's a prescription for a checklist to help you add that analysis step. Follow it and your catalog should sell better soon.

With retailers forced to take a hard look at their bottom lines during the recession, catalogs are adjusting, but not disappearing, says Leslie Linevsky, founder of Catalogs.com. As postage rates climb and customers become concerned about the environmental impact, retailers are scaling back on the number of catalogs they mail out and are using them to drive traffic to their websites.

Mindful merchants know that one of their main roles as brand builders is customer motivation. They know just when the power of a gentle nudge (via strategic cross-sells, meaningful upsells or properly placed point-of-purchase teasers) or a more forceful jolt (you must have this!) is necessary to prompt a sale. In today’s selling environment, with consumers more cautious than ever about their spending, merchants are required to use their motivational jolt skills more often.

Tired of waiting for spending to rebound on its own, retailers are taking matters into their own hands. Stores like Sam’s Club, Target, Toys “R” Us, Staples and Office Depot are offering unconventional promotions meant not only to attract visitors to stores, but also to get them feeling profligate.

To “live curious” as a merchant means to dig deeper, pay more attention to details and patiently sift through the mundane to find the remarkable. And sometimes it means making the mundane simply remarkable.

Upon learning of shotfarm, a free, centralized digital asset exchange service that allows retailers and manufacturers to quickly and securely share product images and information, Schwake immediately joined hoping both his company and his partners could reap the benefits of free, centralized product image management.

Macy's tapped Yahoo this week to recreate its offline Memorial Day sales circular into a Smart Ad-powered pullover ad unit in Yahoo Mail, becoming the first retailer to run the advertisement. Yahoo worked with PointRoll to develop the rollover technology integrated into the Smart Ad. Clicking on it takes consumers to the Macy's home page, but hovering over it opens the unit into a full-page circular, taking up the entire page in Yahoo Mail.