Me and Lithgow City Council Mayor Maree Statham. (Photo by Matthew Brewster.)
Late last year, Lithgow City Council arranged for AusVM to come into town to kick-start ShopGLO (which was part of a LithGLO concept). They began with an open invitation to all shop owners to a seminar where we were taught the basics of visual merchandising. Then, those shop owners who participated were invited put their training into practice with guidance from AusVM consultant, Carol Bagaric, to create a Christmas display in their shop windows.
A competition was held in conjunction with this on Council’s Facebook page, inviting people to “like” photos of the displays, and the businesses with the most votes would be awarded the coveted bragging rights.
Carol asked us our vision of the window display, and once we’d described it, she told us what elements we should get together ahead of time; books we can bundle, some elements we already had in store, and a Christmas tree, in our case. Then Carol brought wrapping paper and Christmas bling to deck our window with ribbon and sparkles. Carol and her assistant helped us put it all together in no time, as she helped a number of shop owners put together their windows displays in the same day. When we were done, we had something we could be proud of and ideas budding for the new year.
Photo by Ally Shelton
By the time we were chosen as the winner of 2012 ShopGlow contest, we had already taken down our Christmas tree and replaced it with a giant Australian flag thong. We are now committed to decorating the window for the changing seasons and look forward to your comments as the year progresses. We would love your feedback and suggestions for further themes.
Australia Day display.
A Reader’s Heaven would also like to take this opportunity to thank Lithgow City Council and AusVM for the opportunity they presented and, as always, we thank our customers who voted on the photo. We feel very privileged to have won this prize and are thankful to our customers and friends who support us every day.
