Your Thoughts on new shop set up...

[Silvertip]

We just put a purchase agreement on a new building (luckily just up the street) This has got me thinking about how to layout the new show room/counter area. It won't be large-the corner portion of a big square bldg. Anyway, I have a really good little income stream from Registration #'s. Boats/Atv/Snowmobiles-
we are right next to a boat dealer and they send people over all day long in the summer. It is not my ideal market but it does pay enough that I can't stop the service. You all know the catch-TIME WASTERS! I don't give a hoot what color/font etc they put on their toys lol so I am trying to put a sample board up with fonts/styles/colors all in one "step by step" wall display that I am hoping to steer customers towards when they start bringing in their hoods or what have you to match their numbers to.
Of course this $20-$50 customer wants my full attention for an hour to make this decision for them and they want them done ASAP or while they wait-drives me nuts but like I said-it does add up.
Have any of you out there found a good solution for this type of walk in customer? Just looking for some feed back from people who have solved the problem without losing the income and still saving their sanity!
Hope I put it in the right forum-
Thanks all and have a great day!

 

[shoresigns]

Well the ideal way to sell quick $50 custom decal jobs is probably online, where the customer can pick the size/colour/text/font etc. without having to interact with you at all.

Obviously you don't want to tell customers to go home and order from your website when they're already in your store, so I would say the offline version of that is to give them a form on a clipboard and ask them to fill it out while you help the next customer or go back to what you were doing. Now, if you're not careful how you present it to the customer, they might feel like you're brushing them off or being impersonal. I would smile and tell them, "We do heaps of these so we've made up a quick form for you to fill out. Let me know when you're done or if you have any questions along the way." Then go back to what you were doing, or the next customer.

 

[Silvertip]

Well the ideal way to sell quick $50 custom decal jobs is probably online, where the customer can pick the size/colour/text/font etc. without having to interact with you at all.

Obviously you don't want to tell customers to go home and order from your website when they're already in your store, so I would say the offline version of that is to give them a form on a clipboard and ask them to fill it out while you help the next customer or go back to what you were doing. Now, if you're not careful how you present it to the customer, they might feel like you're brushing them off or being impersonal. I would smile and tell them, "We do heaps of these so we've made up a quick form for you to fill out. Let me know when you're done or if you have any questions along the way." Then go back to what you were doing, or the next customer.

I do have an online page however I don't have it set up for Ecommerce yet and your right-can't turn them away when they walk in-I am working up a sample board with a few common fonts and colors with prices that hopefully will curb some of the madness and keep things running smoothly! I like the form approach-I may just put a table or counter up just for this. Every customer does count but yikes we have all seen these kinds get out of control with time and energy spent-Thanks for feedback!

 

[bulldozer]

bump the price up and add rush charges if they want it same day past 1 pm. i'm sure most would be happy to wait instead of paying 200%

 

[Silvertip]

I cannot count how many boats have been driven into parking lot and customer wants me to run out there and decide for him what 3 x 18 in. number would look best! Had a guy haul in his sled hood yesterday lol. I think I have something going now and will post it when done to see what you all think.

 

[copythat]

Hmmm good ?

We packed up and moved from a retail to a commercial area. Ah, didn't work. They still come...




Sign Up!

 

[Silvertip]

Something like this maybe what do you guys think?

 

[HulkSmash]

Something like this maybe what do you guys think?

With something like this you're really limiting your options. Rush charge should be based on a % of the job, not a flat fee.

You should develop some sort of minimum.

 

[Silvertip]

With something like this you're really limiting your options. Rush charge should be based on a % of the job, not a flat fee.

You should develop some sort of minimum.

I do have a minimum shop dollar amount for any custom order. This is JUST geared towards the registrations...
I do want to limit options on the registrations (only) and Rush charge is only for registrations as well. I have had people stand in my showroom for over an hour because there are 3,000 fonts to choose from and they want to look at every one and pick over every color etc. Like I said in first post-this is a nice little side income but it really can become a pain in the arse when the shop is at full speed. So yes, I do want to offer the service and for most folks the selection is good enough (IMO) and if they want the full Monty they can pay extra which doesn't really add up to much but it should weed out a lot of the time wasters.

 

[OldPaint]

SIMPLE............get the rule book out for boats/snowmobiles/ etc ON REGISTRATION NUMBERS......
most are pretty straight forward about the SIZE, TYPE OF LETTERS.......give them no more the 3 CHOICES OF FONTS........AND 3-4 COLORS OF VINYL!!!!!
THIS WAY, the come in, pick 1........you cut it weed it tape it and hand it to them $25-30 in 5 minutes!!!!
sort like this
STATE LAWS GOVERN SIZE, FONT OF REGISTRATION NUMBERS!!!!! PICK ONE! IN RED/WHITE/BLACK/BLUE
MI 23506 WC

 

[rjssigns]

We never fail to match the color of a boat perfectly.












(we outline and drop shadow the color on the boat)

 

[HulkSmash]

I do have a minimum shop dollar amount for any custom order. This is JUST geared towards the registrations...
I do want to limit options on the registrations (only) and Rush charge is only for registrations as well. I have had people stand in my showroom for over an hour because there are 3,000 fonts to choose from and they want to look at every one and pick over every color etc. Like I said in first post-this is a nice little side income but it really can become a pain in the arse when the shop is at full speed. So yes, I do want to offer the service and for most folks the selection is good enough (IMO) and if they want the full Monty they can pay extra which doesn't really add up to much but it should weed out a lot of the time wasters.

Is there a reason you're spending time advertising something... that isn't going to make you very much money?

 

[Bly]

We do them occasionally.
$50 cash and I spend 5 minutes max with the customer.
They can have black or white vinyl in Helvetica medium.
If they want to be difficult they are shown the door.

Next..

 

[Silvertip]

Well yes, there is a reason I am advertising something that "doesn't make much money". I made about 11k last year alone. JUST on registrations. It is service that was started way back in 1995 and we are known for it. I don't mind doing it but I do need to find some balance in the new shop. We will be adding other services as well such as auto detailing so we need to get a handle on making things great for our long time customers as well as taking our little shop to a more commercial level.
As for one block font and 3 or 4 colors I do have the DNR rules posted but most choose to do what they want anyway. I service a lot of small stuff because well, a buck is a buck but also it does come back in other ways. I hear it a lot, so and so sent me-you did some numbers for them....

 

[ShirtHacker]

Be it right or wrong this is how I look at it. The more choices you give your customers the longer it is going to take them to decide and the longer they could be taking up your time. Providing many choices can be overwhelming to customers causing confusion/frustration/hesitation. Sure it is nice to do custom and I'm not saying you shouldn't offer custom but I would simplify your standard offering as much as possible to stream line the work cutting down on time spent on your small revenue stream freeing up time to focus on your larger one. Try to drive sales to your most profitable/fastest offering.

Whenever I make changes to my business I try to learn from others mistakes. Behavioral sciences can be helpful here especially when they study Pricing. Once study I read recently might be of use to you here. While the example is much more simplified then the picture you posted the idea is sound.

The Economist and decoy pricing
Dan Ariely describes this famous example in his amazing book Predictably Irrational. He came across the following subscription offer from The Economist, the magazine (he’s also explaining this in his TED talk here):

Both, the print subscription and Print & web subscription cost the same, $125 dollars. Ariely conducted a study with his 100 bright MIT students. 16 chose option A and 84 option C. Nobody chose the middle option.
So if nobody chose the middle option, why have it? He removed it, and gave the subscription offer to another 100 MIT students. This is what they chose now:

Most people now chose the first option! So the middle option wasn’t useless, but rather helped people make a choice. People have trouble comparing different options, but if 2 of the options given are similar (e.g. same price), it becomes much easier.
The same principle was used with travel packages.
When people were offered to choose a trip to Paris (option A) vs a trip to Rome (option B), they had a hard time choosing. Both places were great, it was hard to compare them.
Now they were offered 3 choices instead of 2: trip to Paris with free breakfast (option A), trip to Paris without breakfast (option A-), trip to Rome with free breakfast (option B). Now overwhelming majority chose option A, trip to Paris with free breakfast. The rationale is that it is easier to compare the two options for Paris than it is to compare Paris and Rome.
A graph to describe this:

So if you add a slightly worse option that is similar to A (call it A-), then it’s easy to see that A is better than A-, hence many people choose that.


How you can use it: Add a decoy package or plan to your offer, next to the offer you really want them to take.