Today you’re focused on the last-minute Valentine’s Day shopper. (You’ll recognize him by the panic in his eyes.) But soon you’ll be preoccupied by spring sales. That’s why we asked jewelry merchandising expert Sally Furrer to weigh in on five smart, low-cost ways to update your store for the coming season.

Sally Furrer

1. The most impactful and cost-effective way to give a store a different look is to change out the fabric on the baseboards. You might just want to do a certain section of the store in a fresh, springy color. It changes everything.
2. Creating engaging vignettes that reflect what you’re trying to promote is important. Groupings with color, for instance, are great. You could highlight a couple of Pantone colors for spring by pulling product that matches them. Most of the time when you do this, you only have to buy 20% new product, because you pull things into vignettes that you already have in the store. When you switch things up, the customers will walk in and say, “Oh, I haven’t seen this before.” You’re showing the product in a whole different way.
3. Lots of stores have silk floral arrangements, and a great way to update is to change out the accent colors in the arrangements to something more springy. You can also have your florist do some things in new colors.
4. I’m totally in love with the new shimmer fabrics available for display cases. I feel like they brighten things and play off diamonds and metals. I recently used shimmer fabrics with the Charisma suede, doing the platforms in the shimmer, and the elements that held jewelry in the Charisma. The shimmer spices things up.
5. April is the No. 1 gents’ wedding band month of the year. So I would redisplay and expand my wedding band assortment—making a statement with bands right before wedding season starts.

Emili Vesilind

JCK Senior Editor