Furniture from My Room is dressed in a variety of products from companies like Cindy’s Corner, Delicate Designs, Green Frog Art and P.J. Kids.The Greenville store now boasts 2,040 square feet, and the Wilmington store is 1,200 square feet. Both are decorated with buckets full of whimsy, color and fun. The Greenville store has giant ants creeping along lime walls and across a red-and-white gingham picnic blanket. Other bugs, like grasshoppers, ladybugs and bees, join the happy menagerie of creepy critters.
Bishop said the company’s growth and success hinges on the service consumers find when they first step into one of the stores.
“I know everyone says their retail philosophy is customer service, but we take it a step beyond to a level of personal service,” Bishop said. “Our customers love the fact that the owner of the store comes into their homes. It’s more personal than sending out an employee.”
Armed with a degree in interior design, Bishop has a knack for pulling together creative kids rooms that keep customers coming back to the stores.
“It takes getting into the house and learning about that person,” she said. “Anyone can decorate, but you can’t tell a person’s taste until you go into their home.”
In addition to walking through customers’ homes, Bishop spends time with the child – if he or she is old enough – to find out what interests they have and what types of things they’d like to have in their rooms.
“I can’t do any of that from inside these stores,” she said. “I can only do that when I’m in the house. It’s going a step beyond saying, ‘I can help you find this in a book.’”
About 20% of her customers take advantage of the design service Your Child’s Room offers. The only drawback, Bishop said, is that some of the customers think their jobs are too small for the service. “That’s not the case,” she said. “There’s never a job too small, and we don’t charge for the service.”
Floor to ceiling is full of items. In this airplane vignette, accessories from Handmade Creations, Wallies, Creative Images, Fun Clocks, Green Frog Art and Wick and Wood surround a collection from Ragazzi. The bunks are dressed in California Kids bedding.“If you hook the crib customer and make them happy, you’ve got them for life,” Bishop said, adding that the store mails out cards to customers around the child’s second or third birthday – the time most children are moving from a crib into the “big bed.”
Cards and mementos are key to maintaining contact with customers, Bishop said. “We like to stay in touch,” she said, adding that the store sends small gifts in celebration of births. Gifts include little gingham bunnies, chenille stuffed animals and lullaby compact discs. A postcard is being developed that will allow customers to fill out some general information, including the baby’s birth date and weight, and mail it back to the store for database purposes.
In Greenville, Your Child’s Room competes with two other children’s specialty stores – In the Tree Top, a higher-end store, and The Youth Boutique, which started as a children’s apparel store and gradually moved into more promotional children’s furniture. Both stores are closely located to Your Child’s Room. J.C. Penney and Sears also have stores in the area.
“I think I’m positioned in the right marketing niche to compete,” Bishop said. “Psychology will teach you that most people will choose the middle of the road.”
In Wilmington, Toys “R” Us has a store that includes a baby section. Two other specialty stores – Lollipop Kids and Stork’s Nest – also compete there.
The two Your Child’s Room stores strive to sell different products from the competition, and the 75 or so accessories vendors – some obscure, some not – that fill every nook and cranny help offset any sameness that might pop up from the furniture frames.
The staff prides itself on product knowledge and expertise. “There is nothing in this store that our salespeople don’t know everything about, from the finish, to the wood, to how it’s constructed,” Bishop said. “That’s one way that we’ve withstood the competition that’s surrounds us.”
Bishop and the staff really enjoy the work they do and the interaction they have with each customer.
“What we do is so much fun,” Bishop said. “Where else can you work where you can yell across the room and ask someone if they’ve seen the pink elephant?”
