WHEN YOU PUT IT BEHIND GLASS ...
... Dolores
by Alan J. Zell, Ambassador of Selling

Q. I manage a giftshop in a crowded mall, and a lot of our merchandise is breakable -- costing as much as $500. If we lock it up in display cases to prevent breakage and stealing, we lose many sales. But if we leave it out on display two things happen. One, sales increased; but two, some things got damaged or shoplifted. Doing a study of this we find that profits are better when sales and breakage and thefts are low. But it would be better if we could sell more and at the same time reduce the breakage and shoplifting.

Dolores

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A. Dolores: There is nothing wrong with having expensive or fragile merchandise inside showcases. Doing so shows you have respect for the merchandise and that, yes, it may be fragile, but in its fragility, it is beautiful. In my retailing days we coined a word for such goods: "fragible -- if you treat it as if will break, it won't; if you treat it as if won't break, it will."

One thing about having things behind glass. If they are locked, then opening them must be made easy, that is the lock must be easily accessible. Too often, firms keep the key in a drawer near or in the cash register and/or they put the locks where they are hard to get to (down very low or up very high). Then, if one needs to get the key, they must break away from the customer to get it, or if the salesperson has the key, struggling to open the lock means breaking into the customer's thought process. So, every salesperson should be carrying their key(s) with them at all times and, hopefully, the lock is easy to get to.

There is another aspect to putting merchandise in locked cases as opposed to leaving it exposed and that aspect is "respect." When you put it behind glass, then it likely shows, possibly that you respect it, whereas leaving it exposed may give the opposite impression. It is surprising to me how little disregard customers have for the way they handle things they do not think they are interested in until they go to buy it -- and then when they find a rip or chip they decry how terrible it is the way others treat merchandise.

Putting things in locked cases has other responsibilities in addition to having a handy key and an easy-to-get-to-and-open-lock. In stores both big and small, there are not enough salespeople around, knowledgeable and not knowledgeable, to properly help customers. Customers have come to expect that salespeople are little more than clerks. For years, as a retailer, one of my tasks was to teach my staff how to talk about merchandise in semi-technical terms that showed our customers why such an item could demand the price it did. There had to be respect for not only the goods, but also for the customer's lack of understanding how the items came to be. Certainly, customers have no idea of the techniques that go into making something. Even though giftware is not technical in nature, it has its technicalities.

Not only did we train our staff on these technicalities, we also printed up handouts about each line, its history, something about the materials and methods used and also care and use suggestions. These were available to lookers as well as buyers. They were a very small additional cost to the sales they helped generate.

All the time I've been writing this response, the way one particular store handled your problem has been swirling around in the back of my head. Now, I don't expect this as a solution for you, but it illustrates there are several ways to solve your problem.

The store was on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, NJ. They were purveyors of very expensive porcelain figurines and glass objects d'art that were displayed on open shelves with mirrored backs on the three sides of the room. But -- and this is how he kept people from handling or touching them -- he had the center of the room carpeted and padded to approximately 3" high . . . the edge of the carpet stopped about three feet from the leading edge of the glass. I was there for a big charity affair (a percentage of any sale went to the charity). We were standing elbow to elbow, talking loudly about what was on display was for sale. Yet, no one stepped off the carpet. I don't know that I would have tried this technique when I was in retailing, nor, possibly, should you, but it did work for that shop.

So, Dolores, it is not just a case of whether expensive or fragile merchandise should or shouldn't be put into a locked showcase. It is what you do after you make the decision of where and how to display the merchandise that counts.

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