Sweet sights & sounds

True story: During a garden center visit several years ago, a customer asked a staff member where wind chimes were displayed. The employee nodded toward the corner. “The chime section is over there,” she said. The customer moved that direction to find a chime section that consisted of about a dozen boxes, stacked one beside another on a table.

“Don’t you think you’d have better success selling these if you took them out of the boxes and let them blow in the wind?” the customer asked the staffer.

“We did that for a while,” she said, “but it got so annoying to the employees, all that bell-ringing all day long.”
Moral of true story: That garden center is no longer in business.

Marketing products that seize the senses isn’t rocket science. And, marketed well, chimes and wind art products can boost profits at practically any garden center. Here’s the key: Let those products seize the senses. Here are three items that make it easy.

The product: Music of the Spheres’ hand-crafted, symphonic-quality chimes. Notes/marketing tips: This company does a great job with its visual presentation, as shown here with the background scenes used to market the products through WhimsicalWinds.com, a company that sells these chimes online. But where Music of the Spheres really wins customers is in a store, particularly with items placed in the breeze (or inside near a fan). The rich sounds are exquisite. So is the response from customers. www.musicofspheres.com

The product: Woodstock Chimes’ line of decorative, beautiful-sounding chimes. Notes/marketing tips: Woodstock Chimes offers a unique variety of high-quality, affordable musical gifts that inspire and entertain. Company founder and owner Garry Kvistad knows sound – he is a professional musician who tours and records with the world-renowned percussion group NEXUS, as well as with Steve Reich. Display these items outdoors as a collection or in concert with other items in an outdoor living display, and they will practically sell themselves. www.chimes.com

The product: The Owl Windmill Breeze Buddy from Red Carpet Studios. Notes/marketing tips: This product has a lot going for it – literally. Put it in the breeze to spur movement in the center of the bird – and the entire owl, the arrow on which it sits, and the cups below, likewise, will move in the wind to create an attention-grabbing decorative piece in the store’s plant yard or garden. www.rcsgifts.com