Gimme That Old-Time Religion

News from EuroShop: Black is back!

Or maybe it never went away.

Remember when Calvin and Donna told us the tyranny of black had ended, that it would be all right to wear hot pink and lime green?

The stylish Europeans never took that hook. In Germany, what you see is pretty much still all about one color – black turtlenecks with tight black pants and black leather jackets and, maybe here and there, a splash of black. (Sprockets! Und now ve dance!)

And visual merchandising is back!

Or maybe it never went away.

Along the elegant Koenigs-Allee in Dusseldorf, you'll see roughly 20 full-body mannequins per store window. Gobos whirl, lightboxes shine and the whole thing is bathed in reflected color. They grab your eye and lure you inside.

Same old stubborn Europeans. American retailing concepts have been hungrily imitated in the capitals of Asia and South America. But London, Paris and Milan still demur. “Thanks, but no thanks,” they seem to be saying. “We've been at it for centuries, and you've been at it for… how long?”

Europe still does visual the old-fashioned way, with experienced in-house personnel attending to detailed windows, displays and presentations.

You can see the differences at the trade shows. The visual merchandising pavilion at EuroShop is a panoply of mannequins in enormous, exciting runway shows to moody French jazz tracks. The visual merchandising pavilion at GlobalShop is seasonal decoratives, brilliant graphics and a growing number of fixtures. But hardly a mannequin to be seen – let alone any jazz!

Why? The accepted view is that Europeans are more tied to tradition; they value aesthetics as much as (if not more than) the bottom line; and they're still merchants, while we've become stockholders. They also have fewer chain stores, fewer mega-malls, fewer discounters, fewer big boxes.

EuroShop came around again, in February. To get some better structure, the massive show that ambles through 17 different buildings at Messe Dusseldorf was divided into four sections for 2002: EuroConcept (store equipment, lighting, refrigeration, building technology); EuroCIS (the IT stuff – security, logistics, communications, information); EuroExpo (designs and materials for trade show booths); and EuroSales (what you need to close the deal – p-o-p marketing, sales promotion and visual merchandising).

Do you get it? To the Europeans, fixturing is conceptual; visual is sales!

Maybe I'm making too fine a point of it, but Europeans still see visual as an integral part of getting the shopper to pull out her wallet. American retailers say they see it this way, but when it comes to them pulling out their wallets, they'd rather spend their funds in some other way.

Oh, sure, the visual people are creative – and fun at company parties – but they need people who understand “business considerations.”

European fixturing is brilliant and innovative – smartly engineered systems, flexible, well-made, tightly fitted, capable of holding and presenting large amounts of merchandise in a variety of ways.

But when Europeans need to make the sale, they turn on the lights, turn up the music, haul out the color and cherchez la femme mannequin.