Quiksilver's Big Screens
“Any way you slice and dice it, they’re expensive,” said Steve Jones, vice president of visuals for Huntington Beach, Calif.–based surfwear manufacturer and retailer Quiksilver Inc.
At $5,000 each, the 40-inch plasma screens Jones is describing carry a big price tag, but they make an equally big impact. Quiksilver and other retailers—including Gap Inc., Victoria’s Secret and Nike Inc.—are attracting consumers to their stores with intriguing video and visual displays on plasma screens and other large-screen display monitors.
The monitors, which go by an alphabet soup of monikers such as LCD (liquid crystal display) and LED (light emitting diode), are given the double duty of entertaining crowds and submitting marketing messages to consumers.
Quiksilver is so confident about the plasma screens it has ordered them for 75 percent of its new stores. Quiksilver’s plasma program is well represented in the company’s new outlets, including the Las Vegas store, which opened in February.
But the big daddy of this effort is in Quiksilver’s year-old Times Square shop in New York. The boutique’s exterior storefront signage is made up of LCD screens, which are basically industrial versions of flat computer monitors. Inside the store, four Sony plasma screens, industrial versions of high-definition television sets, show surf, skate and snowboard videos that feature athletes wearing the latest Quiksilver fashions.
Other Quiksilver stores show the same videos on television monitors and Apple Computer flat screens, but Jones said the large-screen displays give Quiksilver a crucial marketing edge.
“To a certain degree, we’re competing with everyone, so we got to be on our game,” Jones explained. “You need to be relevant, current and a part of ’right now,’ and right now, plasma screens are happening.”
Instant messengers
According to ISuppli/Stanford Resources, a market intelligence group in El Segundo, Calif., North American sales for large-screen displays in the retail signage market grew from 24,800 units in 2003 to a forecasted 39,000 units in 2004. Prices have decreased 5 percent each quarter since the screens first became available in 1998. Consumer plasma screens retail for $3,000. Plasma screens used as retail signage are often priced at $5,000.
Jones reported there has been no cost savings yet from the screens, but he said gains made in visual merchandising are compelling.
Joseph Abbati, senior creative manager for Hayward, Calif.–based Mervyn’s, said companies can recoup costs by attracting crowds and possibly saving on signage.
“It shifts the importance of print,” Abbati said. “If a retailer can communicate to their guest quickly, without the wait for printing and shipping and the costs associated with that, it is compelling to move in that direction.”
Mervyn’s has tested plasma screens to assess how the store could benefit from them in the future, according to Abbati.
The benefits of plasma screens could be offset by the screens’ effects on the rest of the store, said Mercedes Gonzalez, director of The Global Purchasing Group Inc., a New York–based group of retail advisors.
“They make the floor space look futuristic and high-tech,” Gonzalez said. “But the stores also have to update their mannequins and fixtures to complement the ’new look.’” Of course, not all retailers are diving into plasma. Instead, some are adopting a more low-tech approach.
Even Quiksilver’s upcoming San Diego store, which will open in August, will forgo plasma screens and rely on fuzzyscreened, beat-up television monitors to relay the surfwear designer’s message.
“It’s the reaction to plasma,” Jones said. “It’s anti-slick.”
Globalshop Notes
GlobalShop, the leading convention for visual merchandising, is anticipating its most successful season since the show’s first event in 1993.
Doug Hope, the show director, said exhibitor space for the March 22–24 run in Las Vegas is sold out. Exhibitor attendance has climbed 11 percent since last year, he noted. “The economy rebounded, and there’s a lot of hunger for education on visual merchandising,” Hope said of the exhibitor response.
Speakers such as retail anthropologist Paco Underhill will give seminars.
GlobalShop’s exhibitors will also treat the department stores and plaza-level retailers at the Fashion Show Mall in Las Vegas to a visual merchandising makeover by building new displays for the shops’ windows. For more information on GlobalShop, call VNU Expositions at (770) 569-1540, or send a fax to (770) 569-5105.
