Buying more time

Editor’s Note: Sometimes the most effective way to learn customer service best practices is to share experiences with one another. There’s a great deal we can learn from independent garden center staff and owners, but hearing perspectives from retailers outside of the industry can expose us to new ideas. That’s why we’ve created “The Suggestion Box,” a platform where people from other industries can share their stories and offer their advice.

Retailers in all industries are well aware they have very little time to capture a customer’s attention. This is especially so at grocery stores, where people often have their lists and want to get in and out.

Estimates vary, but Francesco Todisco, food marketing team leader at Giant Eagle’s Market District in Grandview, Ohio, believes that window of time is just 10 seconds.

That’s why Market District, with 12 stores in Ohio and Pennsylvania, invests so much time, thought and money into its signage. At the 97,000-square-foot Grandview store alone, there are three full-time employees who work on merchandising, tags, signs and labels. Two are artists who hand paint the signs, made with primed recycled cardboard from shipments received at the store.

“You don’t want to look just like everyone else. You want to look unique. You want people to be talking about you. You want people to come back because they are curious,” Todisco says. “People get excited and are going to come back to see the next piece of art.”

The Cultivate’15 bus tour visited the store, and attendees saw signs advertising everything from local hummus to toilet paper sales to alcoholic root beer. One display showcasing a Cleveland beer featured a giant cutout of a dark green, Loch Ness monster-like creature. The idea is to call attention to products throughout the store, especially locally made food, which people may not have noticed otherwise.

“With a sign made by an artist, you can tell a story. The sign gives you more time. Instead of 10 seconds, you may have 30 seconds or 1 minute because of the beauty of the sign,” he says. “You can [encourage the customer] to grab the product and see its value.”

The Market District approach revolves around creating a shopping experience that encourages customers to spend time exploring the store. The carefully crafted signs reflect that philosophy. They have free samples at various counters, areas to dine and drink and more. Though employees have specializations, they are not segmented into departments. Employing a “you see it, you own it” mentality, everyone takes ownership of the store, from customer questions to spills.

The graphic artists create hundreds of signs, tags and labels each week that vary from quick print outs of the day’s soup to intricate entrance signs that rotate quarterly and reflect the seasons. Produce signs change each Thursday and are designed to give customers a farmers-market-like experience.

“We invest 120 hours into the visual aspect of the store because we do think it’s very important and it makes a difference,” Todisco says. “We offer full-time positions to staff in many departments because we believe in taking care of our people so they can take care of our customers.”