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A few weeks back, the entire Flourish Market store was rearranged for the Spring season. Jennifer loves to rework her merchandise and present it to you in new ways. When redesigning the layout, she incorporates the new products, freshly renovated furniture, scene-stealing artwork, and illuminating lamps, making the store look completely different from what it did before. Reimagining the shop can offer inspiration to her customers who come in seeking help with their own spaces.
The entire process can take about 4 days from start to finish, beginning with getting down to a bare store. On day 1, Jennifer and her staff start by removing everything - all of the small items, the artwork, the furniture, and the lighting. They work on only one side of the store at a time, as this process creates quite a stack of stuff! The items are sorted into groupings with similar items, i.e. vases with vases, towels with towels, frames with frames, etc. to better understand the inventory in a particular category, and how much room each category will need in the new layout. The process of grouping gives Jennifer a nice selection to choose from as she rebuilds the displays and eases the process of focusing on just the right thing to make it all come together.
A few days prior to rearranging the shop, she creates a list of all the furniture pieces. She take photos of the areas within the shop for reference, and begin to assess where things will move to in the new design. Careful to completely move everything to a new spot, she will often exchange all of the furniture from one side of the store and move it to across the store to the other side. This is why when you come in, you say "Whoa, I thought this was over there!" Sometimes pieces need to be swapped out and sent to storage in order to bring in new items. The building is really small and presents lots of challenges with layout. It's not easy to work around a pony wall, 2 entrances, and 3 huge windows.
Depending on how punctured the walls are with nail holes, repainting may be required. This can add many hours to the rearrange, but it improves the overall result of the remerchandising. Jennifer hangs a lot of artwork on the walls and tends to hammer twice and measure once, so there can be a lot of spackle and paint needed! After an area has been cleared away, spackled, and repainted, the floors are mopped and the baseboards are wiped down to get the space ready for the rebuild.
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Jennifer starts the transition by using her new layout plan, and moves the furniture around to see if the spacing will work. With strong muscles and some great furniture pads, Jennifer pushes things around and into their new places. Once she likes the general location, she begins to add in the artwork and lighting. These items really set the tone for the vignette and dictate how much space is available for the smaller items sold in the shop.
With over 1500 products in the shop, it can be impossible for everything to coordinate. In general, Jennifer tries to have items 'be friends' with one another. Sher prefers that the items in a vignette include products of differing materials. This keeps the display from reading as 'flat'. A vignette might include a ceramic vase with a faux plant, a wooden item, as well as something metal, like a candle holder. Another factor to consider is mixing vintage with new. Each layer builds upon the last, and mixing old and new creates a more authentic collection of items. The height of the pieces should vary and nothing should hang off the surface or be easily knocked over.
For this rearrange, she created a large display area for the new coffee table books, another one for all the fun silkscreened tea towels. She decided the rack of colorful linen aprons would look good near the doorway. The art wall was an important area to put together on the largest wall in the shop. By layering the pendant lighting over the botanical prints and mirrors made from wood and metal, a neutral backdrop was created which felt fresh and clean.
By the end of day 2, the store will be pieced back together, section by section until each area is 'fleshed out' and the leftover 'remnants' become apparent. Most of the time, the remnants include a couple of pendant lamps, some artwork, a shelf or two, and a lot of faux greenery. It's best to work on the largest things first, and then fill in with the smaller things. The remnant items can be worked into where an area needs a little bit more. Sometimes the remnants are actually the piece that will pull a whole area all together. Here you can see an area devoted to the expanded selection of floor cloths.
Of course, there isn't enough time to get all of the artwork hung by the end of day 2 , so quite often this task is completed on day 3 or 4, depending on how difficult it is to hang due to location in the shop and the type of bracket the piece has.
During most rearranging sessions, things must be quickly placed in their general vicinity, just so the staff can clean off the counters and be open for business on Wednesday. On day 3 and 4, Jennifer will rework an area to get everything just right, refolded, or repositioned.
The rearranging process is exhausting work, often lasting 10- 12 hours for the first couple of days. It's not something to get half way through and have something come up! The store is a complete mess and the only way for it to get presentable again is to continue matching up products with furniture and creating lovely displays.
There is no better feeling than walking into the shop and seeing a whole new space. The presentation at Flourish Market is one of the store's greatest assets and Jennifer loves doing it. Please stop into the shop and see what's been thoughtfully curated for you. It won't be long before Jennifer rearranges it again!