Today’s Biz Ladies post comes to us from Rena Tom, a retail strategist for creative business owners. She previously owned Rare Device, a boutique and art gallery with locations in Brooklyn and San Francisco that was renowned for its carefully edited collection of design objects, books, housewares and accessories, and for supporting small, innovative designers and artists whose work was not easily found in stores. She remains an avid crafter and blogs about personal projects, as well as retail trends and small business tips, at renatom.net.

Today, Rena shares some tips on how to select the right products for your store. From the proper window displays to the most effective product photography, Rena shares her expertise on merchandise planning. Thanks, Rena, for this wonderful post! — Stephanie

The full article continues after the jump . . .

You would think that choosing products for your store would be the easiest part of the job. After all, isn’t that why you wanted to open a store in the first place? I’m not going to try and tell you what to buy — you know what you want to carry already. However, there are many practical considerations to make when merchandise planning. Some of the following tips apply to brick-and-mortar stores, some apply to online only and some to both kinds of storefronts. These may seem annoyingly restrictive, but actually, when you are confronted with thousands of products, it is really useful to have selection criteria in place — even if you ignore it sometimes for that one-of-a-kind find.

Advice for All Stores

Does the product fit into one of your pricing tiers? You should have at least three: low, medium and high. Most items fall into the medium range. However, it’s good to diversify and have products that are more reasonably priced for customers who need a quick gift, plus an aspirational range that may make it onto a wedding or birthday registry. Also, magazines tend to ask about and feature the low or high end for their gift guides.

Is the product timely? Try to find and order seasonal products well ahead of time. Are you shopping for calendars in November? You are running very late! It may feel wrong to order holiday ornaments in July, but if you wait too long, they may be backordered and unavailable when you really need them. And again, the press will be asking you about your new products many months in advance, so make sure you have a few key items for each season picked out early.

Is the product giftable? This is a product that is truly unique, solves a common problem, has fantastic packaging, would combine well to create a beautiful kit or is at a great price point. Every vendor believes their product is all of the above, of course, but as a store owner, you have to know what is going to resonate with your customer. Giftability applies a little less to fashion but does apply to jewelry and accessories.

Is the product limited-edition? Can you be the only seller? This is possible if you have a great relationship with a vendor. You may be able to request a custom product or an item in a special colorway. You might get two of your vendors to work together on a collaboration just for you. Treat your vendors well, and see what they will do for you.

For Online-Only Stores

An advantage of an online store is that you can tell a complete story about a product. You can have tons of product shots, great descriptions, all kinds of measurements, information about the designers, video clips and customer comments and reviews. Another advantage is that you can market in many different ways to different groups of people. Finally, the key to getting noticed online is getting linked from others. Many brick-and-mortar stores have their hands full running their business, and not all start out of the gate with e-commerce. It is complex and expensive to sell both in-store and online, especially if a store owner wants to manage one inventory for both stores. A brick-and-mortar owner may start out with a blog only, but many shopping sites will not link to a product unless you can buy it online.

Just because you can offer unlimited numbers of items on your website doesn’t mean you should. Please edit your lineup! It can be tempting to sell everything, but your website visitor is going to rely on your expertise to show them only the best stuff. There are plenty of very large retailers who sell “soup to nuts,” but as a small business owner, you probably don’t have the resources (or desire) to follow that path. Try to find the best of breed products — the amount of care you take in your selections can be seen at a glance by a savvy online shopper and will give you greater credibility.

How does it photograph? A great product photo is everything, since it must compel a customer to click. All black or all white products are gorgeous but a pain to shoot, unless you have professional photos taken. This also applies to smooth, featureless, minimalist products. I am not saying avoid buying this kind of work, but be aware that it will take extra time and money to get it ready for your website.

Consider shipping, because your customer will. Inexpensive items may not make sense to ship, especially when the cost of shipping may be more than the cost of the item. Heavy or delicate products will be expensive to ship, both to you from the vendor and to your customer. Ditto for internationally sourced products. There is a good reason that many wonderful products from overseas are hard to find, and that is the inconvenience and added expense from shipping, duties, customs and wire-transfer fees. Also, there are different restrictions for different countries on what may and may not be shipped.

Is it one-of-a-kind? Again, the tradeoff here is uniqueness versus the amount of effort to get that product online. A good alternative is products that are “few-of-a-kind,” for example, wallets made from the same recycled leather sofa. The customer may not see an image of the exact wallet she is going to receive, but she should understand conceptually what she is buying. Also great for online stores are more ephemeral items like subscriptions, gift certificates and membership-based products. If it is your friend’s birthday today and they are 3,000 miles away, you can send them a gift via an online store the same day.

Who else carries the product? This is not exclusively an online store concern, but it is very easy to comparison shop online, and many vendors are not limiting the number of online retailers for their product. Find out who your top-three competitors are. If they sell the product you are evaluating, do you really want to bring that product aboard? Also, be careful when carrying items found on the big retailer sites. For example, I loved selecting books for my store, but if a title is 40% off on Amazon, I didn’t list it online. If a book was hard to find, out of print or not on Amazon, it was a go.

For Brick-and-Mortar Stores

The brick-and-mortar advantage is that all five senses come into play for your shoppers. You are creating a fun environment with the store itself *and* filling that environment with desirable products. Letting customers touch and browse can make or break a sale. You can get instant feedback about a product and fine-tune your display, pricing or sales technique quickly. You can also take advantage of the impulse buy and of the sometimes-contagious purchasing that goes on when friends shop together. Customer service is also key, and an online store is very rarely perceived as having better customer service than a brick-and-mortar store.

The product you sell should be visually alluring and easy to find. It must not get lost in a sea of other products; it should complement them. When I review product lines, I will sometimes clip photos of products I like and line them up to see if they merchandise well. You can cut up lookbook photos and physically arrange products together, or use an online visual bookmarking service like Pinterest, We Heart It or Tumblr.

How would you display it? This issue seems a little mundane, but if you have a small store, it is an important consideration. Does it need to hang? If so, will it go in a window or along a wall? Do you have room for it? (This is especially important if it comes in many colors.) If it’s fragile or expensive, do you have a case for it? Will it need special lighting, a pedestal or signage?

At a glance, can you tell what it is for? The answer to this question is something you may not discover until you have it on your shelves, unfortunately. Sometimes you’ll bring in a product that immediately makes sense to you but baffles every person who enters your store. This is bad because nobody wants to buy something they don’t understand or have to explain to anyone who sees it in their house.

Does it relate to other products? Sometimes, it’s fun to choose and test out a single product in a category that you have never carried before, but it may end up looking lonely and out-of-place in your store. It’s better to try a grouping of a few items from that category, or merchandise it with different items in the same color, so that it makes sense to your customer.

Is it an impulse buy? Here is where you can shine in a way that an online store cannot. If the forecast calls for rain, display umbrellas and rainboots in your window. If Mother’s Day is coming up, bring in some flowers to sell, along with your vases. Items like food (tea, chocolate, et cetera) or hard-to-ship perishables like planted terrariums are great for your store. Items that are awkward to ship but easy to take home in a car are also better for you than an online retailer.

I hope this has been helpful to you if you are contemplating starting your own store, or just want to freshen up the lineup at your existing store. For more tips about retail strategy for store owners and makers, I blog five days a week at www.renatom.net. I can also be found on Twitter @rena_tom.

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