Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor® blog at Retaildoc.com

I was in a store doing a display several years ago with a manager. We were creating a simple four-tier display using blue and yellow as the primary colors.  (A great example of how to display correctly is at left from ZOZOs in the Minneapolis airport concourse.)

I explained why height captures our interest, the power of a couple colors, the need to make it a logical display and one item that is different. The manager “got it” and created a couple too.

The next day I came in and everything had been taken apart and reassembled. There were the four cherry tumblers next to a plaque about cats. The solid blue mugs had all been combined with all the blue mugs from navy to periwinkle to baby blue.  The risers were gone and everything was on one level. Four hours of work wasted.

The manager was gone and I asked the assistant what happened. “Oh we moved things around, we always like to change it.”
“Yes,” I said, “I can see that.  Did she tell you why we did it that way?”
“Yes but I liked my way better.”

I was boiling as I’m sure you would too if you had spent time to create a window, a display, a marketing piece and it had been trashed.  It led me to thinking about how Gen-Y is different.  ”I have an a opinion and it is valid,” seems to be a recurrent theme.  Participation, equality, I get it.  But doesn’t that have to be based on something?

My friend Melodie recently sent me a very interesting link prepared by interns at NASA.  It is a pdf of a PowerPoint presentation they presented to NASA about what NASA needs to do to get Gen-Y interested in the space program.

It is a great window into how Gen-Y, those born since roughly 1976 think and shows how they approach things very differently from us boomers.  You can view it here.

The challenge for managers and store owners will be how to not stomp on their creativity and interest that they approach the world with. As to the assistant manager I realized it would have been better to teach all the employees the 10 Steps to Merchandising, rather than just one.

Gen-Y brings a lot to the table if we train them first.  If they don’t get trained they’ll do their own thing which can result in a display that doesn’t sell.

Best-selling author and speaker Bob Phibbs has helped thousands of businesses compete by using his sales approach and not discounting.  His Book, You Can Compete: Double Sales Without Discounting is the backbone of scores of businesses’ training programs because it teaches his methods for making a business successful. Download more free tips at his website. Become a fan of the Retail Doc on Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/thedoc/

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