I’m convinced that whoever wrote the song about the lazy days of summer was not in the wholesale or retail gift business. Not in the United States, at least. The summer gift shows are in full swing and keeping the buyers and showroom staff and reps quite busy. I’ll be at the Orlando Gift Show on Sat., 8/6 and then off to New York for the NYIGF show that begins the following weekend. Watch for my Retail Details press badge and I hope you’ll stop me to say Hi. Scroll down for some fun news at the end of this blog post.
Summer Displays:
Oars are used as hang rails in this summer display at Periwinkle of Potomac Greens in Alexandria, VA. Suspended with boat rope, the oars are the right diameter for hangers and make a clever display in their swimwear area.
Porter Square Books is an independent bookstore in Cambridge, MA. They always do a nice job of creating displays around holidays and various themes, like gardening, movies or events like poetry month or graduation. They have several summer displays, one that features books about traveling around New England, which became a store event in June. Their “book it to the beach” display is complete with a sand castle and books for all ages.
Rice is a Danish homewares and accessories company, known best for their colorful melamine and storage solutions that are fun and functional. They sponsor store display contests for their retail customers worldwide. This company REALLY encourages creative retail visual merchandising and I will be featuring more of their stores in the future. This summer display is from the Rice Ting Bergen store in Norway. The mini-fridge is just the right size for the kids summer snack containers. It catches the eye by being painted bright green, inside and out.
This display at Hollies on the Avenue has a sophisticated, natural, beachy feel. Hollies is a specialty shop for gifts, home accents, and “surprises” in Barrington, RI, and caters to residents and visitors.
This scarf display is in the Lindsay Phillips area of the OneCoast showrooms. A rope ladder display can be a versatile piece for presenting merchandise. Neutral in color, it shows up well against a color wall, as shown here, but is not distracting. Another version are the rope ladders that are available at boat stores and bring a nautical theme to a summer display.
Some displays use props and some are products on traditional fixtures. At the Greenleaf Gifts showrooms in Atlanta and Dallas, they built some props out of their product.
They used sachet packets for the scent Velvet Woods, adding feathers to construct these colorful peacocks in their showroom windows. They turned out great and caused quite a buzz around the marts.
Stay display inspired!Becky Tyre is a Florida-based journalist, visual merchandising consultant and display designer. She writes about retail topics, blogging and visual merchandising for national and trade publications. You can read her most current articles in Gift Shop Magazine. She is the owner and writer of the Retail Details blog at www.SwirlMarketing.com You can reach Becky via email at SwirlMarketing@comcast.net
If you want a lesson in effective use of color in visual merchandising, visit a showroom that carries 
This photo, above, is from their showroom in the 
Sometimes single colors are the best way to make a statement. This is particularly effective when displaying a collection such as this pink grouping by 
Bentley’s Reserve
Once again, their use of color and merchandise arrangement shows a nice blend of mixing metals and a little pop of color. The result allows the white products to really stand out! Product areas are 
Life preservers have always made good props for resort and spring displays, but the colors, stripes and dots on these took this visual merchandising staple to a new level. These two displays at ACCESSORIZE immediately caught my eye on my way to tour a retail store elsewhere in Stockholm. The background graphics were quite nice, as well. I wish I had taken a picture from further back to get the full effect of this display story. To read/view parts 1 and 2 of the Stockholm Sweden displays, 
Don’t you just love how the cake stands are used in the displays on these shelves at 
At Retail Details, we LOVE interesting vases used for jewelry displays! This one is from 
Cute display idea for headbands and hair ties using a boot and a bottle at 
Retail Details & Swirl Marketing send our warmest congratulations to our friends at 
The floor of the store window at 
Father’s Day is not in June in Sweden, but we stumbled upon this menswear display window. The frames were filled with scrunched white fabric for a very interesting effect.
At the entrance to each store, a pedestal was placed with signage promoting the dandy theme. Atop each pedestal was a glass dome and each store created a vignette display featuring items from their store.
