I've always thought of accessories as the exclamation point of a woman's outfit. Take a simple dress and add a unique handbag and it instantly escalates the outfit! It takes one great piece to stand out from the rest.
When I opened Vivid Hue Home in 2015 it was with an emphasis on home decor; featuring custom furniture, stylish mirrors, unique lamps, decorative pillows and one-of-a kind case goods. Sure, we also carried items that were perfect for hostess gifts, birthday and graduation, wedding and anniversary.
But then, almost as an afterthought, we carried a small collection of jewelry and fashion accessories.
Over time, I realized that many customers were coming into the shop searching for the fashion accessories, particularly our unique purses and handbags that weren't easily found in other stores. I slowly started to expand our collection of handbags and clutches. And recently, I realized that we have curated quite a unique assortment. What I love most is that I have found things that don't cost a fortune and still look stylish. Who doesn't love walking into a boutique, falling in love with a great bag and then realizing when you look at the price tag that you can actually afford to purchase it!
This summer, we closed our shop for a day for a store refresh. We do this a few times a year and our goal is to mix things up so they feel fresh and new to us and our customers. During this project, I decided that we were going to dedicate more real estate in the shop towards merchandising our great purses and handbags! Our footprint is small and we had stuffed so many great bags into a corner on a circular rack where they couldn't be easily seen or shopped!
Today I'm sharing some of my favorite purses and handbags that we currently have in the shop and I'm also going to show you how we decided to merchandise them!
One key element of our refresh was to add more dedicated shelving to display our handbags and accessories. Rather than overstuffing them onto a purse tree, we imported three new shelves that are now dedicated to our handbags.
This shelf is now dedicated to displaying some our bohemian chic summer totes, summer clutches and beach totes. We have many more to offer but we carefully curated each row with totes and clutches to compliment one another without becoming visual overload.
Another improvement we made was dedicating real estate to display one or two handbags in a tasteful and stylish way versus piling a ton of bags onto the shelf that can't easily be sorted through.
Below, our Navajo Group Clutch is displayed on the same shelf as one of our hand beaded boho necklaces. I love the two paired together and I love that they both have the same bohemian chic theme.
PS, on a side note, the beaded necklaces are a sure win. It creates an immediate statement the second you add it to a dress or white blouse. Here's a picture of my mama wearing one of these necklaces with her Jcrew summer dress!
The next vignette highlights various clutches, each with a different rainbow theme, along with some of our raffia and beaded cheetah print clutches.
Another refreshed part of our store is this faux boxwood wall! It is in the process of becoming
our selfie station where I hope ya'll come and take photos and post on your social media, but while we're still in the process of waiting for lighting to arrive, I have found that it makes a pretty cool back drop for taking photos of our merchandise. (Shown in the
multi color cheetah neoprene tote).
As a small boutique, I find that we are constantly tweaking the way we are merchandising products to our customers. Our locals love to step into the store and see fresh inventory or
fresh ideas on how to wear our accessories (or
decorate our home products). Hopefully ya'll know that we also ship our products all over the country, daily! We sell a lot via our
instagram and
Facebook profiles and being able to stage our products in a visual way online goes a long way in how well the products sell. That is the reason we put so much emphasis in the store too for how things are displayed. Let's face it, we all want a fun shopping experience when we're looking at
eye candy!
I'd love to hear your thoughts about how we've tweaked our unique purses and handbags in the shop! (And as always, follow us on instagram/Facebook for daily updates and happenings with Vivid Hue Home!)
xoxo Heather