As a regular Art Dog reader, you are a savvy art supply retailer. Your acrylic department likely already follows the best practices for retail. You have “good-better-best” options available, clear pricing and signage, great promotions, well-stocked displays and an educated staff.
With April featuring Acrylic as our Media Focus on the Customer Engagement Calendar, let’s dig deeper and take this month to review how your customers shop. You can improve their experience by accumulating resources in the aisles (color charts, educational information), reviewing trends to make sure you’re highlighting something new, and exploring cross merchandising opportunities.
Fun Fact: We created the images featured above, and throughout this article, using Canva.com. Feel free to download these images and use them for your store’s marketing purposes, or check out our tutorial to learn how to make your own.
Get Creative with Visual Resources
With new social distancing practices, now is a great time to install some visual resources for your customers. Cheeky signs can educate, QR codes can engage and branded signage can create opportunities for loyalty.
When creating signage in-house, identify common questions such as,“What is the difference between heavy body and soft body acrylic?” Use these signs to educate customers and help them connect the dots to other products.
For example, “Soft Body acrylic has the consistency of mayonnaise and spreads easily with a painting knife!” You’ve educated and engaged your customer by giving them a visual, and a tool to review on their way around the store.
Interactive Approach
QR codes have had quite the comeback; a subtle black and white square that is scannable with your phone, this little code allows you to learn more about a specific artwork (museums and galleries), access a menu (restaurants) or register for an event (flyers around town). You can easily create QR codes that will link to resources you want your customers to see. Golden, Liquitex, Sennelier, Winsor & Newton, Royal Talens, and others have wonderful websites and a wealth of resources for your customers to learn from.
The younger generations live a lot of their lives online. Many of them absorb information visually. A novice painter may not think or know to extend the life of their paints with mediums and may not think to ask. Calling out this information as educational quotes like those above is a passive teaching tool to start the conversation while allowing everyone to shop at a safe distance.
Don’t forget to check with your brands for help on how to better promote and educate the unique properties of their products. There are often shelf-talkers or educational panels available.
Focus on Trends
Paint Pouring, Marble Effects, Pop Art and Psychedelic imagery are all trending up in the design and maker world. Styles from the 70’s and 90’s are back in fashion, both in clothing and graphic design. Keep your aisles eye-catching by providing inspirational imagery from these trends.
What would you add to this list? What do you think of your current Acrylic Department? Do you have a staff member who is particularly interested in or knowledgeable about this category? We’d love to hear about it and learn from our Art Dog community! Email us at artdogblog (@) macphersonart.com.
