Blog - Factory Vintage

9 Ways to Turn Off Customers

dealing-with-upset-customers As individuals we all have our own little per peeves. What may turn off one customer may not bother another. However, as retailers we can’t afford to turn off one single customer. Image is everything. Keeping our stores neat and clean is not only easy to do; it’s generally an inexpensive way to attract customers and create a pleasant store atmosphere. In today’s world a disgruntle customer can cause a lot more damage than they could in the past. With social media and the many companies like yelp online, an upset customer has a platform to express their disgust.

Brand Identity : 3 – Your Company Website

In this day an age your website is another huge factor in your brand identity. It will be a tool that in and of itself can open up an entire world of opportunity for your business either when you open your doors or down the road. I would recommend having a professional design your website, like your logo, this will be many customers first impression of your business long before they walk into the door.

Your website should be broken up into a few distinct sections or pages with an easy to use navigation system. You should also use a design that is responsive, that means it is easy to use and navigate a number of different hand held devices.

Hire Your First Employee

Running a successful vintage store takes time and money. You need to make sure that your store is open adequate hours and that there is adequate staff to be in the store those hours. Retail isn’t easy, as the old sang goes, “Retail is 366 days a year, with no breaks.” Each hour your store is closed, is a potential missed sell. The more your shop is closed the more missed sells you will have.

If your business is booming, but you are struggling to keep up, perhaps it’s time to hire some help. If you do hire employees, which will most likely be the case, there is information that you need to secure for your records and forms that you must complete for the IRS.

How To Build A Clothing Display Rack Using Recycled Pallets

Recycled Pallet Rack What better way to display one-of-a-kind recycled clothing but on a display rack made out of recycled articles. You can build display racks with just about anything you find. Old desks and armoires can be used to display merchandise and accessories. I have even seen old refrigerators and household appliances being used to display products well. The idea is that you do not have to purchase new displays or clothing racks to display your products if you can just get a little creative.

Using recycled pallet racks is another great way to display merchandise and accessories and it is actually quite easy to make. In this article we will go step by step through the process of what it takes to make a recycled pallet rack clothing display.

Brand Identity : 2 – Store Sign & Visual Displays

Yes, the way you display your tee shirts matters!

How your store looks is sometimes more important that what you are selling. Is your store entrance inviting? Are your tables and wall standards easy to get to? Are you telling a good visual “story” with your windows? We’ll explore the basics on merchandising your store from a visual perspective and also discuss how to build a formula to keep your store fresh and exciting to your frequent shoppers as well as your new guests.

Let’s start off with a quick definition from ddi magazine – “Visual merchandising takes your consumer from the retail display to the cash register. Encouraging sales through creative color and commercial retail design is a key element to keeping a customer interested.” Nicely put. So what does this mean?

My Freedamn! 7 : 1950s Hawaiian Shirt & Beach Fashions – Rin Tanaka

my-freedeamn-7 My Freedamn! 7, was released in 2008, this edition of the popular series “My Freedeamn” by Rin Taken features over 800 of vintage beach fashions, including some of the many fantastic Aloha shirt examples from 1930s-1950s!!!!

You can learn lots of rare and great examples of old Hawaiian and California-style beach graphics, which were very popular among American beach freaks in the 1930s-1950s! This is also a bible title among vintage fashion freaks!

Pucci® – About the Label

emilio_pucci The Emilio Pucci maison was founded in 1947 by the Marquis Emilio Pucci, a dashing Florentine aristocrat whose fashion career began unexpectedly when the photo of a revolutionary ski suit he’d designed found its way to the pages of Harper’s Bazaar.

Emilio Pucci naturally embodied the post war, jet set glamour which captivated a new group of modern, active women.

He was crowned “The Prince of Prints” by the international fashion press, who were smitten by his exuberantly colored prints and simple, effortless designs, so radical for that time. Their feminine and free-flowing body-conscious shapes translated seamlessly into weightless silk jersey dresses, resort-style sportswear and glorious evening gowns — must-haves for the jet-set crowd.

How to Create a Customer Email List

mailing -list Creating a customer email list is an important way to communicate with your customers about upcoming sales and events. It is also a great way to let your customers share your information with their different friends and colleges. The truth is that If you’re not building an email list, you’re making a HUGE mistake.

Why? Because when someone subscribe to your email list, they are really interested in your brand and are much more likely to open and share your email with others. It is not such a surprising fact, here is why:

Increase Your Sales With an In-Store Seamstresses

Alterations One of the largest obstacles to making a sale in a vintage clothing store is how the article actually fits. Let’s face it, almost everything is a vintage clothing store is a one-off, it’s not like the customer can get the item in size larger or smaller. Often times taking an inch of of the seam, or a half inch of of the cuff is all it takes to turn over-sized item into the perfect fit. When you offer your clients the opportunity to get their items altered it will amaze you to see how many more items your clients start purchasing.

Good to Great – Jim Collins

goog-to-great Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t

This is the second book in a series written by Jim Collins not just about why some business succeed and other fail, but why some companies do great and others just do good.

The Challenge:
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study:
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards:
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world’s greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.