The Footwear Issue
WALL TALES
Eight great ways to create a more dynamic shoe presentation at run specialty. / By Danny Smith
K
ent Wories recognized it was time for a change – a long, long overdue change. For years, the shoe wall at the flagship Runners Roost location on Colorado Boulevard in Denver was an approximately 30-foot monolith of slat wall holding column after column of running shoes on generic plastic wall shelves. Though clean and consistent, the presentation was ultimately uninspiring and intimidating. “A little too uniform,” says Wories, who has owned Runners Roost for eight years. “In some ways, it made a bold statement, but I really thought it was more negative value than positive.” So, earlier this year, Wories teamed with Boulder, CO-based retail consultancy
3 Dots Design to refresh the 40-year-old store, including an extensive revamp of how it presented footwear to customers. Melding various ideas Wories and his team saw elsewhere along with guidance from 3 Dots, Runners Roost now features a more dynamic footwear presentation that has enhanced the store’s vibe, elevated the perceived value of footwear and improved traffic flow on the sales floor. “Couldn’t be happier,” Wories says. In most running shops, the shoe wall is the pinnacle of the showroom. It captures eyeballs and pulls traffic its way as the store’s top-selling product category. A lackluster shoe wall can dampen energy for the product. In contrast, a livelier shoe wall featuring visuals, shoes displayed in different formats
and enhanced lighting can spur excitement and interest. “It’s so important the shoe wall looks interesting because that’s often how customers will judge your store,” says 3 Dots Design owner Holly Wiese, whose firm recently launched online training focused on creating a more compelling footwear presentation. Three decades ago, Wiese continues, run specialty shops tossed shoes on slat wall and never thought twice about it. But today, footwear presentation – a more encompassing term Wiese prefers to “shoe wall” – is more important than ever to crafting a more engaging, inspired customer experience. Here’s what some savvy run shops are doing to achieve that goal.
Photo this page: Danny Smith. Photos on following pages courtesy of 3 Dots Design.
1. DITCHING THE HO-HUM SHELVING. Once upon a time, many running stores had the same exact shoe shelves holding every model on the wall. Increasingly, though, shops are finding ways to mix up the ways in which they display shoes to deliver variety and spice. The revamped Runners Roost, for instance, has shadow boxes it can mount to its wall “to call out footwear that’s a little different without seeming bizarre,” Wories says. In Rapid City, SD, Black Hills Running Company sets its shoes on live-edge wooden shelf. Meanwhile, 847 Running Company in Chicago’s northern suburbs uses vintage produce crates stacked in a Tetris-like array to display shoes in various orientations (photo at right). It’s a spirited, even whimsical look providing dimension and warmth with the natural wood. 12
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