Life's a beach: a Florida dealer turns his hot retail showroom into a cool customer experience

Pool & Spa News, June 4, 2004 by Sharon Edry

"I also like having the ability to move the fixtures around frequently to keep a fresh look [in the store] each and every week," he adds.

The store's gondolas are set at a slant to maximize the number of endcaps that can be seen by customers waiting at the cash/wrap counter. While the interior shelves are regularly stocked with parts, accessories, filter elements and the like, the specialty items featured on the endcaps rotate regularly.

"We see our customers for water tests weekly or monthly; if they see the same old thing every time, we aren't specialty merchants anymore," Allen says. "We become commodity dealers just like the big-box guys. That's not an exciting proposition."

The duo, however, would make some modifications if they were to do this again. "I would have purchased different, even more flexible, gondolas and wall fixtures," Allen says. "The grid design we purchased is too limited."

Bliss by the beach

Now open for a few months, the store is beginning to come into its own. While Allen and Erickson admit that it was challenging to design the facility, they credit their experience, determination and trust in their gut instincts for successfully getting them through the process.

"I am proud of the overall feel of the store," Allen says. "It really doesn't feel like a pool store, but more like a gift shop or specialty store ... exactly what we were trying to achieve."

As for Erickson, he's thrilled with his new showroom: "it's not something anyone's ever done, certainly not in the Southeastern states." He hopes to expand on his vision of paradise by eventually growing his retail chain, which currently includes outlets in Clermont and Orlando, to five stores.

"I've never had so much fun in my lift'," Erickson adds. "The whole idea was really a true epiphany."

It pays to listen

when he sought out ideas to implement in his new retail store in Daytona, Fla., Nils Erickson, owner of Erickson Custom Pools & Spas, turned to the advice of fellow members of the Paramount Advisory Committee Enterprise (PACE).

"I do a lot of traveling and networking, and these people have been so amazing and supportive," he says.

In particular, Erickson credits Lewis "Buzz" Ghiz, president of Paramount Pool & Spa Systems in Tempe, Ariz., and Vance Gillette, vice president and general manager of Water Pik Technologies Inc. in Petatuma, Calif., for giving him innovative suggestions on the look and feel he should seek to create in the store.

He believes their advice to generate emotion about the store and its products is crucial to his success. "If customers walk in and it's boring, they will turn around and leave," Erickson says,

Walk-ins and sales leads have definitely increased since the grand opening, he notes. For a product that has a five-month buying time, that's important. "They'll come back here when they want the best product and the best service, and want to have fun," Erickson remarks.

--S.E.

Opening grandeur

After putting in all the hard work to design and build the ultimate retail store, the next step is to generate enough buzz so that everyone knows about it--and checks it out. That's when retailers should kick their grand-opening planning into high gear.