I will be speaking at the upcoming Portland Gift & Accessories Show!

SUNDAY, JUNE 1, 2008
10:30 am to 12:00 pm
Seminar: Store Design - Tell Your Story
Speaker: Debi Ward Kennedy, Retail Designer Speaker Writer

Based on my design work with wineries in Washington State, I've created this seminar to introduce the principle of Terrior - the French concept of ' Pride of Place'. Information will focus on the individual and unique story that each independent retailer has to tell. Based on your location, your products, your customers, and your business 'personality', you can create a retail environment that tells your own story.

I'll discuss and demonstrate how to make choices & changes that will elevate your visual impact, brand image, and sales:
1. How to arrange your store, including traffic patterns, architecture, and shopping habits of your customers.
2. Planning display areas based on scale, lighting, viewpoints & perspective.
3. Making design choices to build your brand image and tell your own story: color, style, materials.
4. How to take your store’s current look and add/expand it to another style or change to keep up with the changing trends (including Eco-trends), and using what you already have in the way of props, fixtures, etc. and rethinking them to serve in a new capacity with a new look.

Resources include suppliers and suggestions for finding inexpensive fixtures & props, plus a listing of exhibitors at the show who have provided items for use in a dynamic stage display.

With the new management of the show by GLM/dmg world media, there are several changes in the seminar format. One is that seminars will take place on a stage located right in the midst of the show floor - no more back rooms hidden away! The seminars will also be free of charge to attendees, which I know many people will appreciate.

If you'll be at the Portland show, please stop by the stage on Sunday morning and introduce yourself - I'd love to meet you!

For more show information, go to http://www.portlandgift.com/