INTRODUCTION
Children clothing is a profitable business across the UK. This business has observed an increase in volume sales, as market has grown around 7.7% in last two years (Cuthbertson, 2012). The basic reasons for the industry boom for children’s wear were better availability and lower prices of the apparels. Large retailers have seen to be much dominating this category, and these retailers have forced this industry to become much competitive in nature.
Managing the retail store is an art and the management needs to consider different aspects (Gilbert, 1999). Retail stores provide better and more effective touch points. Being retailers of children’s wear is a market that has not been catered still to its fullest and thus this is an option to consider in this particular industry when starting a new business. Retailers that have physical area rather than a virtual area like online retail store provides an edge to brand and a place to provide more effective brand communication (Howard, 2012). This is because, the way store is designed, which kinds of products the store has, how they are decorated, the layout of the store, store’s color theme, each and every thing of a brand, delivers a consistent message about a brand.
OVERVIEW OF SUGGESTED RETAIL STORE
Some of the ideas about how the clothing store for children, Our Store would be are; this store will be all targeted towards kids. Thus the whole designing of Our Store will be done accordingly to make it more attractive and not only a place to shop but also a place to be for kids. Our Store will be having clothing for all age groups ranging from newly born to 12 years old, including both genders; boys and girls. The store will be operating as a traditional or a physical store in Southampton, UK.
Each age group will have a separate store section that means that store will be divided into 13 sections over all. With having a label of age indicating what probable size and type of clothes each section will comprise of. Then each section will further be divided into two sub sections, to have girls wear and boys wear with the colored theme of pink and blue respectively. The reason for having sections for each age is because ‘Our Store’ will be a theme based store. The theme for each section will be different because likes and preferences of children vary with age. As children grow up, their likes and dislikes change very frequently. Thus to attract relevant age of customers, their likes and dislikes will be kept in mind. The ways that will be used for obtaining their preferences are surveys, observational studies and focus groups. And the reason why there will be sub section for girls and boys, so that it becomes easier for mothers and even children to find easily what they want through the cluttered environment and it will also help them to save time.
There will also be a related activity designed for each age group, developed after the studies conducted regarding the behavior and attitudes of targeted age group of children to engage them more enthusiastically with the brand. Likewise activities will be designed with respect to each age group, gender and their behavioral studies.
The role of customer representatives is very important in satisfying the customers (Weitz, & Bradford, 1999). Apart from that, the sales representatives of the stores will be trained to deal with children and their parents in much friendly and playful manner. There will be some sales persons who will be made to wear cartoon costumes such as of Goofy, Mickey Mouse, Pooh, Barbie, Pluto, Spiderman and the other favorite ones of children and they will be acting, speaking in the same voice and tone as the original characters do. They will be helping children in deciding what to buy if children want their suggestions and they will also be playing with children in various activities being held at stores.
Our Store will be a more like a brand experience for the customers, where each and every thing kept at store and each person in stores will be giving a message about the brand. The basic purpose of this retail outlet would be a chance for the brand to be loved by children and a place to be for all children. This retail outlet would be a kind of wonder land for every child where they will have all what they want.
There will also be a colorful children’s cafe at the corner of clothing store, this café will be having casual seating arrangements with very kiddy and comfortable couches arranged in play group styles. The menu for the café will also mostly contain kid’s food items, such as fast food, snacks and juices.
CHILDREN CLOTHING RETAILING
- There are infants wear for newly born till 28 months old.
- Toddler wears, which are there for children up to 3 years of age.
- Pre-school wears are from 3 to 5 years of age.
- And then for school going children which are for children aging above 5 years.
Then secondly colors, also do affect children’s preferences. There are researches available that supports the fact that colors’ choices of a person do vary with age and same happens with children.
Then designs, materials, trends are also part of consideration set not only while having clothes but also for designing retail stores for children. The materials used for most of the toys and places where there are possibilities that children can fall down or they can cause any injury, soft materials will be used there so that these injuries can be avoided.
The trend of other children clothing stores will also be observed to see what our competitors are following in their retail stores, what are their strengths and where do they lack so that we can capitalize on that point and make the position of our retail stores even stronger.
DESIRED IMAGE OF THE RETAIL STORE:
The image of the store is an important element as it is able to attract the consumers (Kotler, Keller, Brady, Goodman, & Hansen, 2009). Using the brand image in the right way to attract consumers is also important for the organization to be successful (Zentes, Morschett, & Schramm-Klein, 2011). The desired image of the children clothing store, ‘Our Store’ will be playful, jolly, fun loving and very kiddy. So that it gains the brand personality of a child that is lovable by children and they perceive the store as one of them. In short, the desired image will be very colorful, lively, fun loving and playful.
The proposed name for children’s clothing store is “OUR STORE”
TARGET MARKET OF THE RETAIL STORE:
Target market is an important part for any business as after identifying the target market, strategies need to be formulated accordingly (Walters, & White, 1990). The target market for the retail store will be kids:
Demographics:
- Age ranging from 0 to 12 years majorly
- Boys and girls
- Social class: A+ to B
Psychographics:
Children who are lively, fun loving, who never get tired of playing, wants to have friends and are friendly, who love to fantasize, who are active and enjoys being at fun places.
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES OFFERED BY THE STORE:
Beside the fact that this store will be theme based store varying with children’s age preferences and wide range of apparels available there, the competitive advantage foe this store will be that our children retail store will provide ‘MIX AND MATCH’ facility to children. It actually means that children and parents will have complete autonomy to pick any trouser or pant and match it with any shirt they would like to have. This facility will also be supported by the suggestions provided by our store’s costumed sales persons who will make their recommendations to guide children and their parents by showing the how would they look together through a mix and match software that will be operated by retail store to facilitate its customers.
Apart from that, another competitive advantage that our store will be having that it will have a baby care centre, that will be there to help mothers of infants to shop freely and they will have care takers who will take care of their babies while they shop. This will allow the mothers to have sufficient time to shop and to be free of worries about handling their babies while shopping.
MERCHANDISE RETAIL FOR THE STORE:
Store layout:
Layout of the store cannot be ignored as it plays an essential part in creating customer shopping experience. The layout for the retail store has to be simple, as the basic aim of store is to be loved by children so this has to be taken into consideration that children understand easy and simple things well and complicated structures make them frustrated. In addition to that, the store has to be spacious, as children love to run from here to there and as this store has plenty of activities going on, it needs a lot of space.
Experts for children’s interior decorations will be hired as consultants to suggest for store’s layout to create right atmosphere for the store.
The lay out will specially take care of the fact it should be designed in such a manner that maximum possible accidental clashes are avoided or their chances are minimized to the maximum level.
The store layout will have following areas as mandatory:
- Sections and sub sections for children’s clothing divided as per age with relevant theme.
- All sections will have an activity area at their ends with respective age’s activity materials that will be various toys, playing stuffs, jumping castles and seating arrangements.
- A place for café at the corner of store which will be placed at the end of activity area, so that children after getting tired of playing, can have something to eat and drink to get refresh.
- Rest room area for kids, gents and ladies
- An area for stock keeping and inventory storage
- IT area that will be responsible for looking after all the working of software and data bases used by the store
- Security area, where all camera vigilance and security officers will have their rooms
- Place for baby care centre
- Administration area, where all admin personnel, store managers, stock managers, and sales representatives will have their offices.
- Rest room for staff
- Area for placements of dummies and other promotional materials
Store atmosphere:
- The atmosphere of store will have to be maintained in accordance with the retail store’s personality, as proposed earlier the store’s personality has to be fun loving, friendly, playful, so it has be to be colorful. So that will be a treat to eyes for those who come in the store.
- Use of scents will be made, to give whole atmosphere a very favorable essence
- The store will have temperature that will be set according to the outside whether, to make it easy for consumers to shop.
- The choices of shelves, their colors and other placement items have to be colorful so much so that it appeals children.
- Music of poems and children’s songs will be played in the store
Visual merchandising and sales promotions:
For visual merchandizing, special efforts will be made. Clothing allows a great potential in this category of promotions. Various dummies of kids placed in a manner that they are engaged in an activity will be placed wearing the most hit clothes of the week and those clothes will be according to the activities in which those dummies would be engaged in. Each section will have an activity based dummies settings, that will also be accordingly to the current trends and seasons to affect the purchases and motivates the consumers to buy.
For sales promotions, the retail store will have annual big sale, at the end year, during Christmas, as this is the best occasion to have sales. During this, our retail store will have up to 50% sale on all the stock from January to July that is previous season.
Customer Service within the Store:
Customer service will be the core of this retail store, as this store is mainly derived to enhance customer purchasing experience and to make this experience a memorable. For customer service to be effective, following steps has been adopted:
- All sales persons and in-store staff will be trained to deal nicely with customers
- Care takers in baby centre has to be specialized, trust worthy and well trained
- Customers will be greeted whenever they enter or leave the store
- Cartoon costumed sales persons have to be good at customer service and they have to be good at mimicking characters to give a real feel to them
- Customer feedback will be asked when they leave the store, if they find any difficulty there
- Customer database will be maintained in retail store database to inform them.
LOCATION STRATEGY OF THE RETAIL STORE:
The store will be located at the area where the children already love to go, for example the street where there are children’s parks, amusement parks, and children’s restaurants are available. If they would see their favorite store at their favorite place they would love to have a visit there.
This will give an edge to the store as they parents will not have to go somewhere else to shop for their kids. They can come there with a mind that this would be there child’s day today, where they will provide all pleasure to their child.
CONCLUSION
Children clothing is much profitable business all across the UK including in Southampton where there are retail stores already dominating the category which indicates that parents prefer shopping through retail stores for their children rather than an online store. As this category is highly competitive in nature, so our store will have to be highly distinctive from its competitors to establish its brand name. it needs to be loved and preferred not only by children but by parents and most of the time they are the decision makers in this scenario. That’s why special attention has been given to make both the age sections delighted and satisfied. The overall approach of our retail store is customer oriented and here retail marketing has been designed to create and deliver integrated marketing message of the brand.
References
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