McNamara Florist is using furniture, props and color to slow customers down so they linger longer.
The showroom of McNamara Florist’s new headquarters in Indianapolis is 3,000 square feet —but Toomie Farris, AAF, AIFD, knew right away he wanted it to feel smaller. To get the intimate feel, he turned to two things: color and furniture.
“Whenever we’re buying for our collections, we’re focused on color, and on making everything feel cohesive,” said Farris, who officially opened the new building last week with a ribbon-cutting ceremony headlined by the mayor. “We use furniture and things like lamps to help bring the size down, so that it’s a scale that feels familiar to people.”
Farris also made a decision to leave some of the building’s industrial feel intact; exposed rafters and ceiling with a natural patina help give the space an industrial loft feel.
These choices aren’t just about aesthetics and branding. They tap into a larger trend that retail expert Jim Dion pointed to during his session at the Society of American Florists’ annual convention in Maui in September. Increasingly, he argued, customers are turning to the Internet for their needs (diapers, printer cartridges, etc.) but choosing brick and mortars for their wants, and that’s where the idea of slow shopping comes in.
“Slow shopping is all about giving the customer experiences,” Dion said. “How do you slow them down and give them a reason to stay longer? Give them eye candy.”
At McNamara Florist, that idea is a driving factor behind the vignettes and showroom set-up, at the showroom headquarters and the business’s eight other regional locations.
“If customers are here for holiday inspiration and if they want shopping to be an experience, we want to make it easy for them to meander through our vignettes,” he said, adding that the addition of furniture, shelving and lamps helps make each scene look familiar, while the pops of seasonal merchandise keep it fresh.
Read more about how national brands are tapping into and profiting from the slow shopping movement, including through services such as in-store facials, cafes and reading areas.
