Creating an environment that stimulates the senses and reflects current design trends is essential to building that brand that is uniquely your own.

Creating an environment that stimulates the senses and reflects current design trends is essential to building that brand that is uniquely your own.

By Albert Turick - Amcase

Fixtures, graphics, advertising, staff training, product knowledge, customer care - all are elements of your brand. Creating an environment that stimulates the senses and reflects current design trends is essential to building that brand that is uniquely your own.

The senses: What's hot now?

Color:
Vibrant, natural tones in home products from appliances to furniture to dinnerware are the prevailing look of home furnishings products and interiors today. Industry color forecasters point to a growing environmental consciousness and trends in global cultural unity as guides in forecasting color trends for 2009 and beyond A wide range of greens and blues, and strong earth colors, such as pumpkin and cinnamon, are the newest neutrals. Fruitwood accents such as Cherry and Pear have replaced Maple, Oak and Pine as favorites.

This color palate can be rich background for traditional, contemporary and regional style furnishings, while providing a softening counterpoint for sleek electronics and appliances.

Wall finishes, flooring materials, display fixtures and service counters that appropriately combine this new palate will have a broad cultural appeal and give your store an upscale, aspirational look.

Light:
Today's compact fluorescent light sources are not only cool and energy efficient, but cast fuller-spectrum light that most overhead fluorescents do not. Skin complexions, wood tones and warm colors are enhanced by fuller-spectrum light sources and create a more comfortable atmosphere. This effect, combined with the shadowing achieved by multiple light sources such as table and floor lamps, will help lend the “at home “ feeling to a store that that encourages customers to linger longer and build a bigger contract.

New store build-out's or upgrades should incorporate handy access to power poles, wall plug strips floor wall and ceiling outlets to help make the best and safest use of alternative light sources.

The newest LED track lighting systems will help punch up furniture groupings and art walls. Low power consumption and thousands of hours in bulb life make LED lighting a great low maintenance choice over incandescent or halogen bulbs. While the initial investment in LED will be higher, long term savings in energy consumption, bulb replacement and maintenance costs will be realized.

Sight and Sound:
The Home entertainment wall is the sensory heart of the rent-to-own store. No longer content to sit on shelves, today's home entertainment products want to hang, swivel, surround interconnect and dazzle. Achieving all of this in an environment that requires easy and frequent product turnover, means that a versatile display system is needed to satisfy the many requirements. As smaller screens, projection sets, DLP's and CRT's come off contract, they need a place to sit – a display system with interchangeable shelves and movable platform bases serves this purpose nicely. Large flat screens, however, need to hang the action on the wall. Nothing draws a crowd better on a Saturday than your biggest LCD panel thumping out a Blu- Ray disk through a 7,I system! Set up a plush seating group, throw in a movie gift certificate and call it a complete package.

The Amcase Electronics Merchandising System has everything needed to build a total home entertainment showcase. Modular wall display panels and floor fixtures , integrated signal amps, hidden cabling and locking TV brackets have made this system the Rent to Own industry standard for electronics and TV merchandising, Off the wall - the new Mini-Tower (see photo) is a compact display fixture that can be dropped anywhere in the store, no installation required. It's a gaming center, a TV department outpost, “Virtual Greeter”, computer gaming fixture or entertainment center anywhere in the store.

Amcase can help you plan your RTO environment and provide you with a complete package of state of the art store fixtures. Amcase's electronics and TV merchandising system, appliance fixtures, customer service counters and modular office furnishings can all be coordinated in a wide range of in stock finishes to give your RTO store its own brand identity.

Amcase: We know RTO.

For more information contact Marsha Davis at 888-396-9060 ext 103, Marsha@amcase.com - www.amcase.com.