Setting Up a 21st Century Social-Centric Micro-Mall in the Hood using PVC Cards, QR Codes and Exhibition Displays
It is very possible to open up a retail center in the hood taking advantage of our large commercial zone infrastructure using modern technology and innovative ideals that worked in other high-density areas around the globe. To fully understand the social-centric micro-mall model that will be outlined in this article, let’s look at some of the best retail strategies around the world that we can borrow from.
Note: This is a re-publish from 2010 previous version of Dream and Hustle. As you see, I was rambling with excitement about this business model, but had various issues preventing me from implementing them. Also a lot of cornball cats were quietly doubting me and this hustle. Now that I taken care of all those issues and the cornball hustle bloggers disappeared or staying quiet – we are about to execute this hustle but with new data and research. This article is for you go get a background on this hustle and I will follow up with a more updated realistic micro-mall business model for the hood. Keep in mind this article was written for brothas and sistas before m-commerce was still talked about, not implemented in America.
In Tokyo, Japan in the Shibuya district, there is a place called the Lcafe and I have blogged about them before plenty of times. Lcafe is run by Sample Labs and I seriously recommend you read this great article to understand the business model:
A cafe with a new concept will open Wednesday in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, offering women product-marketing samples — and a place to hang out if they’ve missed the last train.
Lcafe, run by Sample Lab Ltd. inside the Parco department store, will give companies the opportunity to display promotional product samples.
….
“It’s a touch and try concept under the current recession,” said Shoji Matsushita of Sample Lab. “I think it is good that people can try out a product before actually buying it.”
….
When customers purchase drinks or food at the cafe, they get tokens that can be exchanged for sample products.
The interior is designed to make female customers feel at home, providing women’s magazines and hand mirrors.
What is revolutionary about the Lcafe is they combined a social setting like a café with marketing science to create a new social marketing phenomenon. You should understand the goal is to have the women trying out products and talking to each other about it to spread word of mouth. We going to borrow that social marketing aspect for the hood.
Coming out of Scandinavia, there is this company called IKEA that many of you are familiar with. If you been to IKEA you will notice that you are not shopping in a traditional since but is walking around immersed in the IKEA experience. You are taking a pencil and a piece of paper and writing down the product you want.
Then you go downstairs to this big warehouse area and actually have to find the box the product is located and load it up yourself. You then got to go home and try to put the thing together yourself. And you know what is so amazing about that? You were so immersed in the IKEA showroom walkthrough that you didn’t mind navigating an ugly warehouse, putting that big piece of furniture on your cart, stand in a long IKEA line, try to fit it in your car and tried to put the thing together.
That is because IKEA gave you a beautiful presentation and they set up their store like an exhibition people can walk through. Do you know this is social science being played upon you? This is the same science when you walk though a museum exhibition and then you end up at the gift shop and some of yall have no problem buying stuff because you loved the experience. That walking through an exhibition experience is what we going to borrow from IKEA and bring it to the hood.
Coming from the USA, there is this place called Sam’s Club run by Wal-Mart. What makes Sam’s Club spark our interest is their membership model. People pay upfront for a Sam’s Club membership and get a card that they will have to show to go inside. Once inside, they will get access to products and services they can buy at special rates. We can assume Sam’s Club track their member buying habits and track sales to see what products that we can reorder and what products do not work.
Another thing Sam’s Club does is product sampling – the protocol appears to call for an elder church person the community knows (similar to the Wal-Mart greeter) . We realize Wal-Mart uses data tracking of their members to optimize their business and have the best prices and products available. WE need to borrow this optimization model from Wal-Mart to make sure we can sell products that matter and bring that science to the hood.
In Hong Kong, due to the limited space, Micro-Malls have been popping up. Please read this excellent article from the Hong Kong Hustle blog that gives you a clue of how the micro-mall is operated over in Hong Kong. There are some great photos and descriptions in that article that shows you how they design their micro-malls in basement areas of office buildings as an example.
Notice in the picture above the number of “micro-stores” that are inside a narrow space. This concept is the result of scarcity of affordable real-estate space in Hong Kong and these cats innovated with some hustle skills on how to setup shop in the most affordable manner possible. We are going to borrow the raw innovative hustle skills these cats in Hong Kong did to setup a micro-mall and bring that to the hood.
So we are going to take the social marketing model from Japan, the exhibition model from Scandinavia, the membership model from America and the micro-model from Hong Kong and create a social-centric retail experience in our hood to propose a new business model that we can setup to bring a great retailing experience and economic empowerment back to the Black community in the hood.
Finding a Location
Look for an empty building that has a lot of open space with about 10,000 square feet to possibly 20,000 square feet on the cheap. Detroit has a lot of hot properties like this and Detroit might be a nice spot to test market this concept. You really want to take advantage of the big warehouse style buildings in the hood that are empty and abandoned by manufacturing firms.
The best place in the hood you really want to target is near a local train stop/bus stop combination that can transform into a busy commercial zone. Places like Chicago, DC, Philly, NYC, Newark, Boston, Portland and more have places like this. The train and bus system help bring foot traffic to your door and it is one of the biggest assets the Black community has but do not realize it. If you do not have foot traffic, you want a spot where people can easily walk to and congregate.
To be honest, in Chicago, I saw plenty of buildings for sale under $300,000 that has over 10,000-20,000 square feet of retail commercial space near train/bus combination on the West Side, North Side and South Side. I’m not going to focus just on the West Side because this type of retail outlet you can startup on several parts of town and in countries as you grow and grow. You can even setup a regional retail chain if you got big dreams
When I was in Tokyo, there was this electronic store called Yodobashi Camera that appear properly situated near every train station that brought in foot traffic. Notice in the video below in the first few minutes, you see a train station, across the street is a store with impressive digital signage and when you see the guy go into the store, you will notice walk around boutique style elements.
To be honest, I was in this store shopping my ass off and I remember posting up a video on this blog with that video.
See, if you get a place where the train runs on the weekend, you will get people from everywhere visiting your spot to do business and socialize and this is the biggest advantage to setting up shop in the hood.
Planning the Layout
The best example I want to give for the layout is the upscale expensive stores like the Louis Vuitton and Gucci Store where they show you the display items and make the setting nice enough to walk around in. You do not have to make your micro-mall upscale but you want to understand the science of why they make these luxury boutique stores in Beverly Hills or Times Square have space to encourage walking.
You also want to have sitting areas to make people feel comfortable. Most people who are not comfortable are quick to leave the store, but if you have them sit down, they looking around at products, they will come back another day.
Don’t forget about using overhead signs, possibly digital signage or hanging vinyl banners to promote your best selling products in the store. The overhead banners can be used to show what section they are in like other retail stores so you can have signs to show the men section, the ladies section, the kids section, gift ideals, health/beauty and so on.
What you are aiming to do is turn that 10,000 plus square foot spot in the hood into a place that people would love to walk through like a model home, an art museum or gallery or an upscale boutique. You want to do that in the hood for the 400,000 cats that live around you in a 5 mile radium that have to drive 10 mile to the nearest Target/Wal-Mart/Walgreens.
Type of Products for the Social Micro-Mall
The best sellers you should focus on in these micro-malls are not jewelry and large items but health/beauty care like facial cream and lotion, over the counter treatment care like contact lens cleaning solution and seasonable items like gloves, sunglasses and flip-flops. Believe it or not, these are the things that sell and now you know why Walgreens, CVS and Rite-Mart got customers in their small stores, even when next to a bigger store.
Those everyday items are what you should focus on selling because these items are quick things to pick up for people getting off a train stop on the way home. This is your Unilever, Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson stuff. Now remember, this is not the old days when these bigots stopped you from being able to get this stuff to sell, you can get this stuff shipped by UPS or Fedex everyday from a wholesaler.
Setting Up the Display
Your display should be attractive, well-lighted and something that can be noticed as people are walking around. Your social micro-mall should be designed to encourage efficient foot traffic and efficient browsing. The better your foot traffic and the better people can browse, the better you will have sales transaction.
You will have two main areas to place your products – on the walls or the center aisle along the walkway path. I’m looking for advice on better display items but for the walls, it looks like shelves and for the walkway, the glass cube displays. Both of them have their advantages and disadvantages.
The shelves along the wall should be recessed shelves due to constant traffic and avoiding someone running into a shelf that is sticking out. The problem with shelves is they only allow a few people standing in front of it to see the product on display. I would recommend only having the bigger items stored on recessed shelves and high enough for everybody to view.
Instead of recessed shelves you can use the display seen below at this Tokyo shop against the wall. I’m straight telling yall the truth – I loved shopping like this when I was in Tokyo, having the ability to browse at displays items.
The glass cube displays allow you to have smaller items on display in the walkway area for people to look at while they are walking.
These things are kinda cheap and I’m surprised at how inexpensive they are. To be honest, you can find a lot of stores going out of business that sell these things on the cheap also. The problem I have with these cube displays is if some idiot accidentally pushes it over and hurt someone in the store. I’m still researching a display that is safe but the picture above in Tokyo and that glass piece in the center looks more professional and up to the job.
Now once you have the items on display, you want to have an item tag that has a QR Code for people to scan. I would probably use blank business cards I can send through an inkjet printer and use a business card maker that can print the name of the product, the product number and the QR code which is a link to the web site we will talk about in the next section. Just get a cheap plastic business card holder to display the QR code/product description in front of the item, similar to how they did it in the picture above with the action figures.
Getting the Technology Together
Keep in mind, you are building a revolutionary retail experience for the hood that never been done before using proven success model around the world in high-density urban environment. For too long, many of you assimilation paternal seeking cats want these suburban White flight bigots to tell you how to do your inner city neighborhood and many of you cats want the government to give you grants and handouts and ish like that.
Nah homey, all the hood really knows is we got to hustle to get ours and that’s the approach we talking to bring business and life back into our communities. The revolution is never documented, it is invented and we have to invent new processes for the hood and that’s where technology comes into play.
The goal is to build a micro-mall to be successful is to allow people to walk around like they are at an exhibition or gallery to increase foot traffic and promote an environment that has a lively flow. You also don’t want knuckleheads in the spot being disruptive or on something else other than buying your products. You also want to be able to sell items as efficiently as possible. These are the solutions in which you will use technology so let’s talk about the technology.
PVC cards or Magnetic Stripe Cards
Having a membership management program with branded PVC Cards that people can put on their wallet or keychain is required material. These items are proven to increase repeat customers, help spread word of mouth and it will help you understand what your customers are buying or leaving on the shelves to collect dust.
You want membership software to have your customer sign up and give them an id number for your database program. In your database, you just want their id, their email address and if you can, get their phone number for SMS related services. You can setup shop like the DMV or the bank and get a photo id of the person in question so when they ready to buy from you, you can see if the card match the person and be able to greet them personally as a longtime friend. This stuff does matter because no one else in the hood is doing treating brothas and sistas with that kind of respect and attention, are they?
You can do your PVC Cards in so many ways and I’m only going to cover a few ways to do it. One way is to order custom PVC cards from a printer that has your custom artwork on it and in some cases, you can have a custom hologram. These look like Visa credit cards with the hologram image and it cost about $500 for 500 cards which is $1 a piece – that is a good value to get a loyal customer and they will show others your card when they talk about your establishment.
In terms of capturing the id embedded on the PVC cards, you can use things like a magnetic card reader/writers that you can buy off eBay. But I think there is something neat you can do and that is, just have a QR code printed on a PVC card with your logo on it and a nice background.
See, you can print this out on your custom printer and cats will be playing with their mobile phone trying to read it. If you got cats playing with their mobile phone and the 2D code, then you are getting them ready to do shopping with you using their mobile phone – that’s one good way to prep them up for using 2D codes.
In case you didn’t catch it – I’m using that same “boxshot” software to create this membership card image that you can use to sell your e-books.
Web Site
You can build a web site for the computer that allows people to see your store, the photo gallery of the walking area so they think it is nice to check out and you can post videos of cats using their cell phone to check out products at your social micro-mall. The funny part is you doing all of this on the West Side of Chicago and doing it more advance than these other cats out there. And you can use the web site to sign up customers and have them come visit to pick up their free membership card – you don’t print until they get there, make them wait and walk around the micro-mall as you print it up.
But your web site for the mobile phone should be very simple. All you need is a catalog of your products that will show up when someone looks up an item number or scan the QR code with their mobile phone. It should be a simple HTML web page that has the picture of the item, the product name, the price and if the item is in stock. If out of stock, give them the option to get a SMS text message when you get the items back in stock. In addition, you have two buttons that give them the choice to add the item to their mobile phone shopping cart or save the item on a wish list.
The QR code on display will have a url link like this http://yourmicromallname/productid.html that the mobile phone will load up. You should be able to use web browser cookies to track the user shopping cart but that’s another topic we can get into later. So the user will see a product, scan in the QR code, get a product display on their mobile phone and they can create a shopping cart on their phone that they can check out when ready to purchase the stuff at the counter.
Now, you can even add free wi-fi to your shop and what that does is allow cats who got things like the iPod touch, PSP or their Nintendo DS connect to the Internet. What you can do there is now allow these people to enter in the product id number instead of scan in and have the same service. This is why I said print the product id number along with the QR code.
Running the Business
Let’s wrap all of this up into the unique fun experience you want to provide in your social micro-mall for the hood that you come from and you represent and you still got love for the people there. You obtain a warehouse in the hood near a train/bus area in a commercial center that is cheap – think Detroit. You then refurbish the place to be a walking social areas for people to come and browse and shop like they are at an Apple Store.
In case you wondering, Apple took the same model from Japan and they have a crowded traffic store in the mall and that’s the same concept I’m presenting to you cats to do in the hood. Then you make it easy and seamless to browse and buy products and make the place exciting for the hood to go to and buy Colgate toothpaste and contact lens cleaning solution at the same time.
So let’s wrap up how you want to operate the business:
First you get the general merchandise and other items that you can fit in display cases or shelves for people to browse. If customers have questions about the item, they can ask a sales associate that is some teenager you hired walking around the store in a friendly manner hoping answer questions on the ground. Kinda like the Footlocker cat.
You want to organize sections of your social micro-mall such as health/beauty, seasonal, men and women like IKEA organized their furniture categories as people walk through the place. People love organization like this. People who are quick shopping after getting off the train from work will know what section to go to and get what general merchandise item they need.
Once the customer is ready to check out, they go to a section where they you scan their id and pull up their shopping list, you review the shopping list with them and once they approve, you submit the order to the back room and they get it all together. They pay for their product and you move on to the next customer. You hire cats to process these customers with respect and personal care.
Now, one thing you can do and what cats don’t understand is you can set up something where someone on the train goes to your web site and order the stuff they need. They can sit on the train and order Colgate toothpaste and because you know them as they have a membership id, you can have their order ready so when they get off the train, go to your store, they ready to check out..yall didn’t realize that, did ya?
See, this is how you do business in the hood for the 21st century by thinking like a 21st century cat. Keep in mind that worldwide, major cities are coming up with ideals and the hood is part of that worldwide movement. Let’s get in touch with what the world is doing and straight ignore and bypass these punk ass bigots and fake ass Black leaders trying to keep the hood down.
The Benefits to the Hood
Providing the Black Community a Retail Experience with Dignity and Respect. You ain’t treating them like these immigrants who has this “you break, you buy, no refund” attitude towards the Black community or the Walgreen corner store experience where you giving people your money knowing they don’t give a damn about you or the Black community. By providing dignity and respect, you give people in the Black community a reason to shop and doing this help increase the overall economy in the Black community.
Job Creation. You can hire high school cats to help ask questions, update the web site and you can hire cats to stock the products and fulfill the orders. And if those cats treat your business good, you let them open up shop on another side of town to take the store model to Cleveland and let them be a partner. That’s how you empower cats in the hood.
Additional Hustle Tips
There are multiple ways you can run your own retail revolution in the hood using worldwide influence and those other shops in the hood around you don’t know how to even bring it like you. Because you learned how to do retailing in the hood on a different angle, you are in a zone these other hood retail shops can’t even comprehend or match. These other cats are too busy disrespecting Black customers to be innovative and that’s your advantage you can do if you open up a social micro-mall in smack middle of the hood.
You can really run with using QR codes if you want to. For example, you can create a shopping bag with your QR code on it.
People will want to scan your shopping bag with their phone and it is so unique that it will be a marketing item that people all over the city and world will come to your hood and want to shop at your spot.
Another thing you can do is use museum type display to showcase products instead of glass cubes that allow more people to view the product at the same time while walking.
And you can even do something crazy like this store in London did and we got plenty of buildings in the hood that look like this building:
I’m going to straight tell you cats in the hood – the world is ours and we got so much opportunity out there we can do with our community and we got the customer base right under our noses. These bigots and these White Privilege chasing cornball Blacks ain’t going to tell the hood how to do for self – we got to learn how to do that on our own and use what we got. I showed you the perfect example of how we can do the whole world and look at what other cats are doing and bring it back to the hood to build up. Let’s run with these stuff, start up new ideals and new process for our hood and build upon it.
Everything I just wrote to you is practical to implement and all it takes is for you to go out and do it. For real, let’s redefine retailing for the hood, especially in Detroit, do for our communities and rebuild it our way and make paper at the same time. Every last one of you can do everything I just laid out here if you tired of working that job and want to have your own setup back in your community that you came from.
For real, go back home to the hood, open up shop that respect brothas and sistas, go to work for yourself and build your community with new thinking and processes..let’s get this.
http://dreamandhustle.com/2013/03/setting-up-a-21st-century-social-centric-micro-mall-in-the-hood-using-pvc-cards-qr-codes-and-exhibition-displays/
It is very possible to open up a retail center in the hood taking advantage of our large commercial zone infrastructure using modern technology and innovative ideals that worked in other high-density areas around the globe. To fully understand the social-centric micro-mall model that will be outlined in this article, let’s look at some of the best retail strategies around the world that we can borrow from.
Note: This is a re-publish from 2010 previous version of Dream and Hustle. As you see, I was rambling with excitement about this business model, but had various issues preventing me from implementing them. Also a lot of cornball cats were quietly doubting me and this hustle. Now that I taken care of all those issues and the cornball hustle bloggers disappeared or staying quiet – we are about to execute this hustle but with new data and research. This article is for you go get a background on this hustle and I will follow up with a more updated realistic micro-mall business model for the hood. Keep in mind this article was written for brothas and sistas before m-commerce was still talked about, not implemented in America.
In Tokyo, Japan in the Shibuya district, there is a place called the Lcafe and I have blogged about them before plenty of times. Lcafe is run by Sample Labs and I seriously recommend you read this great article to understand the business model:
A cafe with a new concept will open Wednesday in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, offering women product-marketing samples — and a place to hang out if they’ve missed the last train.
Lcafe, run by Sample Lab Ltd. inside the Parco department store, will give companies the opportunity to display promotional product samples.
….
“It’s a touch and try concept under the current recession,” said Shoji Matsushita of Sample Lab. “I think it is good that people can try out a product before actually buying it.”
….
When customers purchase drinks or food at the cafe, they get tokens that can be exchanged for sample products.
The interior is designed to make female customers feel at home, providing women’s magazines and hand mirrors.
What is revolutionary about the Lcafe is they combined a social setting like a café with marketing science to create a new social marketing phenomenon. You should understand the goal is to have the women trying out products and talking to each other about it to spread word of mouth. We going to borrow that social marketing aspect for the hood.
Coming out of Scandinavia, there is this company called IKEA that many of you are familiar with. If you been to IKEA you will notice that you are not shopping in a traditional since but is walking around immersed in the IKEA experience. You are taking a pencil and a piece of paper and writing down the product you want.
Then you go downstairs to this big warehouse area and actually have to find the box the product is located and load it up yourself. You then got to go home and try to put the thing together yourself. And you know what is so amazing about that? You were so immersed in the IKEA showroom walkthrough that you didn’t mind navigating an ugly warehouse, putting that big piece of furniture on your cart, stand in a long IKEA line, try to fit it in your car and tried to put the thing together.
That is because IKEA gave you a beautiful presentation and they set up their store like an exhibition people can walk through. Do you know this is social science being played upon you? This is the same science when you walk though a museum exhibition and then you end up at the gift shop and some of yall have no problem buying stuff because you loved the experience. That walking through an exhibition experience is what we going to borrow from IKEA and bring it to the hood.
Coming from the USA, there is this place called Sam’s Club run by Wal-Mart. What makes Sam’s Club spark our interest is their membership model. People pay upfront for a Sam’s Club membership and get a card that they will have to show to go inside. Once inside, they will get access to products and services they can buy at special rates. We can assume Sam’s Club track their member buying habits and track sales to see what products that we can reorder and what products do not work.
Another thing Sam’s Club does is product sampling – the protocol appears to call for an elder church person the community knows (similar to the Wal-Mart greeter) . We realize Wal-Mart uses data tracking of their members to optimize their business and have the best prices and products available. WE need to borrow this optimization model from Wal-Mart to make sure we can sell products that matter and bring that science to the hood.
In Hong Kong, due to the limited space, Micro-Malls have been popping up. Please read this excellent article from the Hong Kong Hustle blog that gives you a clue of how the micro-mall is operated over in Hong Kong. There are some great photos and descriptions in that article that shows you how they design their micro-malls in basement areas of office buildings as an example.
Notice in the picture above the number of “micro-stores” that are inside a narrow space. This concept is the result of scarcity of affordable real-estate space in Hong Kong and these cats innovated with some hustle skills on how to setup shop in the most affordable manner possible. We are going to borrow the raw innovative hustle skills these cats in Hong Kong did to setup a micro-mall and bring that to the hood.
So we are going to take the social marketing model from Japan, the exhibition model from Scandinavia, the membership model from America and the micro-model from Hong Kong and create a social-centric retail experience in our hood to propose a new business model that we can setup to bring a great retailing experience and economic empowerment back to the Black community in the hood.
Finding a Location
Look for an empty building that has a lot of open space with about 10,000 square feet to possibly 20,000 square feet on the cheap. Detroit has a lot of hot properties like this and Detroit might be a nice spot to test market this concept. You really want to take advantage of the big warehouse style buildings in the hood that are empty and abandoned by manufacturing firms.
The best place in the hood you really want to target is near a local train stop/bus stop combination that can transform into a busy commercial zone. Places like Chicago, DC, Philly, NYC, Newark, Boston, Portland and more have places like this. The train and bus system help bring foot traffic to your door and it is one of the biggest assets the Black community has but do not realize it. If you do not have foot traffic, you want a spot where people can easily walk to and congregate.
To be honest, in Chicago, I saw plenty of buildings for sale under $300,000 that has over 10,000-20,000 square feet of retail commercial space near train/bus combination on the West Side, North Side and South Side. I’m not going to focus just on the West Side because this type of retail outlet you can startup on several parts of town and in countries as you grow and grow. You can even setup a regional retail chain if you got big dreams
When I was in Tokyo, there was this electronic store called Yodobashi Camera that appear properly situated near every train station that brought in foot traffic. Notice in the video below in the first few minutes, you see a train station, across the street is a store with impressive digital signage and when you see the guy go into the store, you will notice walk around boutique style elements.
To be honest, I was in this store shopping my ass off and I remember posting up a video on this blog with that video.
See, if you get a place where the train runs on the weekend, you will get people from everywhere visiting your spot to do business and socialize and this is the biggest advantage to setting up shop in the hood.
Planning the Layout
The best example I want to give for the layout is the upscale expensive stores like the Louis Vuitton and Gucci Store where they show you the display items and make the setting nice enough to walk around in. You do not have to make your micro-mall upscale but you want to understand the science of why they make these luxury boutique stores in Beverly Hills or Times Square have space to encourage walking.
You also want to have sitting areas to make people feel comfortable. Most people who are not comfortable are quick to leave the store, but if you have them sit down, they looking around at products, they will come back another day.
Don’t forget about using overhead signs, possibly digital signage or hanging vinyl banners to promote your best selling products in the store. The overhead banners can be used to show what section they are in like other retail stores so you can have signs to show the men section, the ladies section, the kids section, gift ideals, health/beauty and so on.
What you are aiming to do is turn that 10,000 plus square foot spot in the hood into a place that people would love to walk through like a model home, an art museum or gallery or an upscale boutique. You want to do that in the hood for the 400,000 cats that live around you in a 5 mile radium that have to drive 10 mile to the nearest Target/Wal-Mart/Walgreens.
Type of Products for the Social Micro-Mall
The best sellers you should focus on in these micro-malls are not jewelry and large items but health/beauty care like facial cream and lotion, over the counter treatment care like contact lens cleaning solution and seasonable items like gloves, sunglasses and flip-flops. Believe it or not, these are the things that sell and now you know why Walgreens, CVS and Rite-Mart got customers in their small stores, even when next to a bigger store.
Those everyday items are what you should focus on selling because these items are quick things to pick up for people getting off a train stop on the way home. This is your Unilever, Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson stuff. Now remember, this is not the old days when these bigots stopped you from being able to get this stuff to sell, you can get this stuff shipped by UPS or Fedex everyday from a wholesaler.
Setting Up the Display
Your display should be attractive, well-lighted and something that can be noticed as people are walking around. Your social micro-mall should be designed to encourage efficient foot traffic and efficient browsing. The better your foot traffic and the better people can browse, the better you will have sales transaction.
You will have two main areas to place your products – on the walls or the center aisle along the walkway path. I’m looking for advice on better display items but for the walls, it looks like shelves and for the walkway, the glass cube displays. Both of them have their advantages and disadvantages.
The shelves along the wall should be recessed shelves due to constant traffic and avoiding someone running into a shelf that is sticking out. The problem with shelves is they only allow a few people standing in front of it to see the product on display. I would recommend only having the bigger items stored on recessed shelves and high enough for everybody to view.
Instead of recessed shelves you can use the display seen below at this Tokyo shop against the wall. I’m straight telling yall the truth – I loved shopping like this when I was in Tokyo, having the ability to browse at displays items.
The glass cube displays allow you to have smaller items on display in the walkway area for people to look at while they are walking.
These things are kinda cheap and I’m surprised at how inexpensive they are. To be honest, you can find a lot of stores going out of business that sell these things on the cheap also. The problem I have with these cube displays is if some idiot accidentally pushes it over and hurt someone in the store. I’m still researching a display that is safe but the picture above in Tokyo and that glass piece in the center looks more professional and up to the job.
Now once you have the items on display, you want to have an item tag that has a QR Code for people to scan. I would probably use blank business cards I can send through an inkjet printer and use a business card maker that can print the name of the product, the product number and the QR code which is a link to the web site we will talk about in the next section. Just get a cheap plastic business card holder to display the QR code/product description in front of the item, similar to how they did it in the picture above with the action figures.
Getting the Technology Together
Keep in mind, you are building a revolutionary retail experience for the hood that never been done before using proven success model around the world in high-density urban environment. For too long, many of you assimilation paternal seeking cats want these suburban White flight bigots to tell you how to do your inner city neighborhood and many of you cats want the government to give you grants and handouts and ish like that.
Nah homey, all the hood really knows is we got to hustle to get ours and that’s the approach we talking to bring business and life back into our communities. The revolution is never documented, it is invented and we have to invent new processes for the hood and that’s where technology comes into play.
The goal is to build a micro-mall to be successful is to allow people to walk around like they are at an exhibition or gallery to increase foot traffic and promote an environment that has a lively flow. You also don’t want knuckleheads in the spot being disruptive or on something else other than buying your products. You also want to be able to sell items as efficiently as possible. These are the solutions in which you will use technology so let’s talk about the technology.
PVC cards or Magnetic Stripe Cards
Having a membership management program with branded PVC Cards that people can put on their wallet or keychain is required material. These items are proven to increase repeat customers, help spread word of mouth and it will help you understand what your customers are buying or leaving on the shelves to collect dust.
You want membership software to have your customer sign up and give them an id number for your database program. In your database, you just want their id, their email address and if you can, get their phone number for SMS related services. You can setup shop like the DMV or the bank and get a photo id of the person in question so when they ready to buy from you, you can see if the card match the person and be able to greet them personally as a longtime friend. This stuff does matter because no one else in the hood is doing treating brothas and sistas with that kind of respect and attention, are they?
You can do your PVC Cards in so many ways and I’m only going to cover a few ways to do it. One way is to order custom PVC cards from a printer that has your custom artwork on it and in some cases, you can have a custom hologram. These look like Visa credit cards with the hologram image and it cost about $500 for 500 cards which is $1 a piece – that is a good value to get a loyal customer and they will show others your card when they talk about your establishment.
In terms of capturing the id embedded on the PVC cards, you can use things like a magnetic card reader/writers that you can buy off eBay. But I think there is something neat you can do and that is, just have a QR code printed on a PVC card with your logo on it and a nice background.
See, you can print this out on your custom printer and cats will be playing with their mobile phone trying to read it. If you got cats playing with their mobile phone and the 2D code, then you are getting them ready to do shopping with you using their mobile phone – that’s one good way to prep them up for using 2D codes.
In case you didn’t catch it – I’m using that same “boxshot” software to create this membership card image that you can use to sell your e-books.
Web Site
You can build a web site for the computer that allows people to see your store, the photo gallery of the walking area so they think it is nice to check out and you can post videos of cats using their cell phone to check out products at your social micro-mall. The funny part is you doing all of this on the West Side of Chicago and doing it more advance than these other cats out there. And you can use the web site to sign up customers and have them come visit to pick up their free membership card – you don’t print until they get there, make them wait and walk around the micro-mall as you print it up.
But your web site for the mobile phone should be very simple. All you need is a catalog of your products that will show up when someone looks up an item number or scan the QR code with their mobile phone. It should be a simple HTML web page that has the picture of the item, the product name, the price and if the item is in stock. If out of stock, give them the option to get a SMS text message when you get the items back in stock. In addition, you have two buttons that give them the choice to add the item to their mobile phone shopping cart or save the item on a wish list.
The QR code on display will have a url link like this http://yourmicromallname/productid.html that the mobile phone will load up. You should be able to use web browser cookies to track the user shopping cart but that’s another topic we can get into later. So the user will see a product, scan in the QR code, get a product display on their mobile phone and they can create a shopping cart on their phone that they can check out when ready to purchase the stuff at the counter.
Now, you can even add free wi-fi to your shop and what that does is allow cats who got things like the iPod touch, PSP or their Nintendo DS connect to the Internet. What you can do there is now allow these people to enter in the product id number instead of scan in and have the same service. This is why I said print the product id number along with the QR code.
Running the Business
Let’s wrap all of this up into the unique fun experience you want to provide in your social micro-mall for the hood that you come from and you represent and you still got love for the people there. You obtain a warehouse in the hood near a train/bus area in a commercial center that is cheap – think Detroit. You then refurbish the place to be a walking social areas for people to come and browse and shop like they are at an Apple Store.
In case you wondering, Apple took the same model from Japan and they have a crowded traffic store in the mall and that’s the same concept I’m presenting to you cats to do in the hood. Then you make it easy and seamless to browse and buy products and make the place exciting for the hood to go to and buy Colgate toothpaste and contact lens cleaning solution at the same time.
So let’s wrap up how you want to operate the business:
First you get the general merchandise and other items that you can fit in display cases or shelves for people to browse. If customers have questions about the item, they can ask a sales associate that is some teenager you hired walking around the store in a friendly manner hoping answer questions on the ground. Kinda like the Footlocker cat.
You want to organize sections of your social micro-mall such as health/beauty, seasonal, men and women like IKEA organized their furniture categories as people walk through the place. People love organization like this. People who are quick shopping after getting off the train from work will know what section to go to and get what general merchandise item they need.
Once the customer is ready to check out, they go to a section where they you scan their id and pull up their shopping list, you review the shopping list with them and once they approve, you submit the order to the back room and they get it all together. They pay for their product and you move on to the next customer. You hire cats to process these customers with respect and personal care.
Now, one thing you can do and what cats don’t understand is you can set up something where someone on the train goes to your web site and order the stuff they need. They can sit on the train and order Colgate toothpaste and because you know them as they have a membership id, you can have their order ready so when they get off the train, go to your store, they ready to check out..yall didn’t realize that, did ya?
See, this is how you do business in the hood for the 21st century by thinking like a 21st century cat. Keep in mind that worldwide, major cities are coming up with ideals and the hood is part of that worldwide movement. Let’s get in touch with what the world is doing and straight ignore and bypass these punk ass bigots and fake ass Black leaders trying to keep the hood down.
The Benefits to the Hood
Providing the Black Community a Retail Experience with Dignity and Respect. You ain’t treating them like these immigrants who has this “you break, you buy, no refund” attitude towards the Black community or the Walgreen corner store experience where you giving people your money knowing they don’t give a damn about you or the Black community. By providing dignity and respect, you give people in the Black community a reason to shop and doing this help increase the overall economy in the Black community.
Job Creation. You can hire high school cats to help ask questions, update the web site and you can hire cats to stock the products and fulfill the orders. And if those cats treat your business good, you let them open up shop on another side of town to take the store model to Cleveland and let them be a partner. That’s how you empower cats in the hood.
Additional Hustle Tips
There are multiple ways you can run your own retail revolution in the hood using worldwide influence and those other shops in the hood around you don’t know how to even bring it like you. Because you learned how to do retailing in the hood on a different angle, you are in a zone these other hood retail shops can’t even comprehend or match. These other cats are too busy disrespecting Black customers to be innovative and that’s your advantage you can do if you open up a social micro-mall in smack middle of the hood.
You can really run with using QR codes if you want to. For example, you can create a shopping bag with your QR code on it.
People will want to scan your shopping bag with their phone and it is so unique that it will be a marketing item that people all over the city and world will come to your hood and want to shop at your spot.
Another thing you can do is use museum type display to showcase products instead of glass cubes that allow more people to view the product at the same time while walking.
And you can even do something crazy like this store in London did and we got plenty of buildings in the hood that look like this building:
I’m going to straight tell you cats in the hood – the world is ours and we got so much opportunity out there we can do with our community and we got the customer base right under our noses. These bigots and these White Privilege chasing cornball Blacks ain’t going to tell the hood how to do for self – we got to learn how to do that on our own and use what we got. I showed you the perfect example of how we can do the whole world and look at what other cats are doing and bring it back to the hood to build up. Let’s run with these stuff, start up new ideals and new process for our hood and build upon it.
Everything I just wrote to you is practical to implement and all it takes is for you to go out and do it. For real, let’s redefine retailing for the hood, especially in Detroit, do for our communities and rebuild it our way and make paper at the same time. Every last one of you can do everything I just laid out here if you tired of working that job and want to have your own setup back in your community that you came from.
For real, go back home to the hood, open up shop that respect brothas and sistas, go to work for yourself and build your community with new thinking and processes..let’s get this.
http://dreamandhustle.com/2013/03/setting-up-a-21st-century-social-centric-micro-mall-in-the-hood-using-pvc-cards-qr-codes-and-exhibition-displays/
