Fashion Evening

After a lot of meetings, planning, organisation and a last minute panic Thursday 26th September arrived - our first ever evening event of any kind.

 The shop closed at 5.30 as usual and we got to work - moving chairs, setting up mannequins, pouring champagne and trying not to eat the delicious plates of chocolates before the customers arrived! Elaine and Francesca from devine Clothing in Dorset street set about organising their clothing offerings and adding plates of pearls and brooches around the shop. We rearranged the shop to make the most of the space that we had moving the chairs into the middle to allow customers more room to browse and to make the shop feel slightly different.

6.30 came and with it our first customers -  a glass of champagne in one hand, a couple of chocolates in

the other and their purses at the ready customers began browsing our winter stock. The reaction we got to the shop look was fantastic, customers seemed to enjoy the music in the background and having the opportunity to browse the shop in a more relaxed environment. (We are now going to continue to have background music on a daily basis as we felt it helped customers to feel more relaxed and were told it improved their shopping experience).

As customers tried and then bought shoes or boots (or both in some cases!) staff members were handing out our goody bags which customers were delighted with and we felt added a touch of elegance to the night. For our goody bags we had generous donations from The Reef Spa on London Road and a couple of items from participating brands.

Around the store we placed "get the look" showing how clothing items from devine and our footwear can be worn together. We focused on three outfit ideas - evening, work and casual and used this seasons trends, colours and fabrics to put together these looks - everyone likes a bit of visualisation!

The evening was busy throughout the time period with people constantly popping in for a browse or another chocolate! We asked all the customers that bought with us that evening to fill out a feedback card (designed by the lovely Hannah at Ditto) to help us improve on events in the future if customers felt this one had gone well.

Here are some of the comments we received: 

"The evening suited me perfectly - no pressure and a chance to try on shoes in a relaxed environment" Mary Popeck, customer. 

 

"(I) found the evening enjoyable, able to look around freely, very helpful staff" Valerie Wickenden, customer. 

 

"Everything was lovely, staff very helpful" Yvonne Brooker, customer. 

 

"Fab event and a testament to all your work" Hannah Griffin, Ditto. 

 

We saw this an occasion for the staff to dress up so although we all wore our Hoads shirts our footwear was very different, all wearing shoes from the shop (naturally) Sarah Martin wore purple Clarks Coolest Berry heels, Nicola wore Pedro Miralles 7600 in black patent, Lynn wore Clarks Hamble Park, Sarah Redman wore Gabor Ellen in black and James Hoad wore Barker Toddington in tan. Its always fun to dress up and again we felt this added something to the night - along with advertising the product it made the evening feel distinctly different from an average shopping day which is the atmosphere we wanted to create for the customers.

All in all I would say we had a very successful evening, a massive thank you to everyone who was involved with the planning and of course most importantly thank you to all the customers who came to our event.

After the success of this one we are arranging another one near Christmas, we hope to see you all there!

Photographs of the event can be found on our Facebook page

If you have any ideas or comments about this event or future events please let us know.