Using A Retail Mindset For Events & Weddings with Margaux Fraise

Kevin Dennis (: 00:00

All right, folks, welcome to another episode of Mind Your Wedding Business. We're here with Margaux Fraise. Did I say it right? Oh, I got it. All right. I'm excited. So she's going to be here to talk to us today about using a retail mindset for events, which I'm very interested in because I think this is going to be a totally different approach to what we all do in our business. So I'm really excited to dive into this topic with you. But before we jump in, tell us a little bit about yourself and how we got you here today.

Margaux Fraise (: 00:06

Yeah.

been a wedding planner since: 2011

Kevin Dennis (: 00:52

You

Margaux Fraise (: 00:53

Most wedding pros do, right? Most wedding pros actually don't go to college for hospitality or travel. We don't like just jump in. We have an other career and then we find a love of weddings, right? So the entire other career that I had was retail consulting. I put myself through college working retail jobs. I was a retail employee. I was a retail assistant manager, manager, district manager.

haven't worked for them since: 2010

Kevin Dennis (: 01:24

Wow.

Margaux Fraise (: 01:53

Nordstrom and the Nike fixturing looks different. It's because the company that I used to work for designed all of that and kept it up. So they specialized in what we call shop and shop spaces, right? So I got a, and we had some other contracts. Famously, I worked for Yahoo before, kind of crashed and burned with the invention of Google. ⁓ So I worked in a Yahoo office building on a floor all by myself. It's a really funny story, but I was,

Kevin Dennis (: 01:59

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

⁓

Margaux Fraise (: 02:22

they operated stores, so they sold like Yahoo stuff, with like sweatpants and mouse pads and stuff that had the little, what we used to call the Y bang, which was the Y and the exclamation point. And they sold retail products and they needed a retail consultant to help them do that. So those are the two main accounts that I worked on, but basically it opened my eyes, you know, after working retail to all the concept, the underlying concepts that go on to get

Kevin Dennis (: 02:30

You

Okay. Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 02:52

people to buy things because that is what the retail industry is there for. is there, it solely exists to get you to buy stuff, right? So, and they have a long history of doing it there. You if you think about the Sears Roebuck company is from like the 1880s, right? So they have a long history of getting people to buy things. And in the United States,

Kevin Dennis (: 03:11

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 03:17

They've been going about it a very specific way. So a lot of the concepts that we'll talk about during this talk are so ingrained in the American psyche and how Americans buy things that we don't even realize it's happening because it's so different from how other countries may have a barter culture or, you know, things like it's very different for Americans, but there are things that are ingrained and you can use some of those for any business, right? For any small business and

Kevin Dennis (: 03:26

Mm.

Margaux Fraise (: 03:46

They've been selling things online now for nearly 30 years, right? man, I'm gonna age myself since I was like 15 years old. So the mid 90s is when people started like selling stuff online. If you think about like the very first footsteps of like Amazon when they only sold books. Yeah, the heyday, can we go back to that? But yeah, eBay. ⁓

Kevin Dennis (: 03:52

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

eBay, remember eBay too? Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 04:11

But yeah, and so a lot of these concepts when we're talking about retail can apply to brick and mortar, they can apply to online, they can apply to small businesses. I just think that people have kind of forgotten them. And so that's why I want to talk about them and kind of bring them back from someone who's worked in just about every role in retail, including at the very top where, you we decide how things are going to be sold to people, you know, how the POS systems are designed. Those are point of sale, like your cash registers and things like

Kevin Dennis (: 04:21

Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 04:41

From that to the signage to the marketing, everything. So I'm really excited to chat about it.

Kevin Dennis (: 04:45

It's funny, just in giving your background, we used to work, ⁓ do a corporate event for a company called Mondelis and they're the ones that would bake all the triscuits and Oreo cook stuff. And it was a great event because we got to try all these funky Oreos and different things. one of the things they would talk about is like end caps in stores and how impactful it is. then even like you guys have bonds down in Southern California, we have Safeway up here.

Margaux Fraise (: 04:55

Yep.

Yep. my gosh.

Kevin Dennis (: 05:10

But like they would do that big Monopoly game and how many millions of dollars you had to be to be part of that game. It was insane. I learned so much from behind the scenes of that.

Margaux Fraise (: 05:17

Yeah.

science of selling things in a grocery store by itself is like a whole subset of marketing and in-store selling because it's very specific. the average person doesn't know that when you walk into a grocery store or the grocery aisle of a Target or Walmart or whatever, that whatever they consider to be the two shelves that are eye level,

Those are prime placement shelves, especially things like cereals, breads, ⁓ frozen dinners, frozen pizzas, ⁓ everything at eye level. That company is actually paying to have their product at eye level. And the reason is that there, is this company that ⁓ I used to read a lot of the guys books. His name is Paco Underhill. If anyone is interested, he wrote a lot of books, why we buy call of the mall, a lot of stuff like that.

Kevin Dennis (: 05:49

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 06:14

And he owned this company, I think it's called Envirocell, where they would literally put cameras in stores, hire people to follow people around stores, to study, see the behavior of people in stores. And they found out all this wild stuff. And one of them is that women especially will not bend over to pick up things close to the floor. They just won't do it. So.

Kevin Dennis (: 06:17

Hmm.

Wow. Study.

⁓

Margaux Fraise (: 06:40

If you are a serial company and you want that mom to buy her kids that thing, what you want the mom to buy is in that prime placement. Kids' serials are towards the bottom because kids are small. And they do that for every single thing because they follow people. They've studied this for years in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s to see how people interact in store spaces.

Kevin Dennis (: 06:50

Mmm.

⁓ jeez.

Margaux Fraise (: 07:09

That's kind of like the first concept that I tell people is like, especially in events. And what I think has made events of mine so successful throughout the years as a planner is that I made a point earlier in my career to talk to the venue owners and say, can you tell me, you know this venue, what is the best layout for this venue? Because those are the people that are watching. Those are the people that are seeing how people move through their spaces and everything. And I'm like, are there dead spots?

Kevin Dennis (: 07:32

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 07:38

in this venue, I asked them that and they were really surprised. Most of them said they'd never been asked that before. And I'm like, well, I don't want to reinvent the wheel here, right? Because I think a lot of event professionals, planners, us, we are also to blame for this. We want to make everything new, right? And sometimes there is a reason why a venue is setting things up specifically because they know that if you put a table here, that's going to cause a

know, blockade, people are going to go around, there's going to be more accidents, stuff like that. It's kind of the same concept, but it is something that I took from those retail days to apply to an event business.

Kevin Dennis (: 08:19

Yeah. Well, and it's funny when you say that there we're in-house, our company, Fantasy Sound is in-house at two venues that we, you we do all the lighting for and there'll be some outside coordinator will come in and never worked there before. And we're doing this funky weird layout that doesn't flow right. And I'm like, and I always go, we're reinventing the wheel on this one, you know, like it, and it just makes it difficult for everyone involved because it's, you know, like

For us, it's the hanging points in the ceiling where things go, and now we can't make things symmetrical sometimes, so we're really having to work hard. So it's funny. I love the approach you would take with the venue, because why reinvent the wheel if you know what works there? And then from that, build out and get creative from that layout. Yeah. Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 09:06

Right. I'm talking mostly about logistical things, right? I'm definitely not telling people they can't get creative with stuff, but...

Kevin Dennis (: 09:12

But I feel like you can still get creative. Here's kind of the flow, and let's get creative off of what works.

Margaux Fraise (: 09:14

Yeah, when you... Yeah.

Right, right.

But I think when people come in, they're like, Hey, is there any reason why people haven't used this room for this and this room for this? I would actually listen to the venues when they give you the answer, right? Because they're, you know, most planners will say, well, we're going to do what the client wants, but the client has hired you for a reason and that is your expertise. And as, as the lot of vendors may think, but it's not actually true. weren't actually experts on the venue, the venue.

Kevin Dennis (: 09:25

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 09:47

owners, the experts on the venue. Just like I consider myself an expert on other things that go on in the wedding. You consider yourself an expert with the AV and stuff like that. Like we all have our areas of expertise. And one of the things I want people to get more, you know, used to doing is actually listening to the other vendors and having a better communication, which is why one of the reasons I started the summit, we skipped over the summit, the wedding summit series, um, which is available to all wedding professionals. We've got a Facebook community.

Kevin Dennis (: 09:56

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 10:17

about 5,000 members. have between four and 6,000 attendees for each of our events, which are free. And the reason that I make the main summit event, which happens once a year for all wedding pros, is because I want them to talk to each other. Because I feel like a lot of times we're focused on our own little bubble, like what's going to make my planner life easier, what's going to make a florist life easier. And we're not really working together to make sure that that happens. ⁓ So that's why I do it. So excited for that.

Kevin Dennis (: 10:19

Wow.

Mm-hmm.

Well,

it's funny because when we're doing dinner, our vendor dinner, we're usually in a table in another room all by ourselves. It always cracks me up when there's that vendor that has turned their back and isolated themselves from everyone else. And I'm like, ⁓ I guess you don't want to talk. But that's a good, it's an easy, we're all breaking bread. It's an easy way to communicate and it's an easy way to just kind of learn a little bit about each other. And that's how you get

future business is like, you know, but there's this, it's this one photographer, she always her and her assistant have their back to us and will not. And it's a photographer I don't recommend because I don't really know much about her. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, so it's it's really hard. So, all right, let's get back in. So ⁓ retail, so what inspired you to bridge the gap between retail and the world of weddings and events?

Margaux Fraise (: 11:27

⁓ man. Yeah.

Yep. Yeah.

give is in the in like early: 2011

Kevin Dennis (: 11:47

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 12:10

Um, even so long that there is an Irish brand called Penny's and they couldn't, they couldn't expand because JC Penny has a trademark on their name everywhere else. So if you've ever visited a Primark or Primark, which is like an H &M, they have some of them in the United States. That's actually from the Irish brand called, Irish brand called Penny's, but they can't use the Penny's name. So JC Penny's got a new CEO and you know, he was like,

Kevin Dennis (: 12:14

Hmm.

Hehehehehe

Hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 12:38

I know what the American public, because he wasn't from retail, he was from some other industry. And he's like, I know what the American public wants. They want straight pricing. They want square pricing. want to know what they're going to pay and pay that. So they did this whole ad camp. They changed the brand. They changed the logo. They went to what they called no sales. Right? Yes, this happened. And the reason you don't remember it is because it did not last very long. ⁓ So.

They, they read it, brand, they read it, thing where everything was a square, right? It was like their everyday price and they were having no sales. And what they miscalculated on was that sale culture and finding a deal is so ingrained in the American culture, especially for women that we didn't buy it. We were like, well, we're just going to wait till it goes on sale. What do mean? No sales. That's not real. Like you're going to put this on sale. You're going to go back. Like nobody believed it. So it lasted like four or five months.

Kevin Dennis (: 13:08

I do remember that. Yeah, yep.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 13:34

Like it was the most, they reverted everything back. And if you go to a JCPenney's now with a few that are left, right, that survived this, it's sale, sale, sale, sale, sale, sale, sale, So I think that there, there's a lot of things that are happening now with, with each new generation, right? Like there's the TikTok generation, but there are, there are still certain concepts that we can learn from retail because these tactics are so ingrained.

Kevin Dennis (: 13:34

wow.

Yeah, yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 14:03

in the American psyche, right? So like if you're a small business and you don't ever take advantage of offering a sale, then you may be losing out on business, right? What I tell people is like, you shouldn't just bring your price down. If you're going to bring your price down, you got to bring the services down to match because I don't ever want people to lose out on money because my job is mainly to support wedding professionals to

Kevin Dennis (: 14:05

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 14:33

level up to make more money, make more profit, have a better lifestyle. So when I say take advantage of the fact that the American psyche is all about sales, it's not that I want you to charge less money. It's that I want you to understand that people like to get a deal, right? But I'm not saying that you should offer a $10,000 package for $5,000 at the same service level. It's offering a $5,000 package for the person who would never buy the $10,000 package.

Kevin Dennis (: 14:56

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 15:03

and to finagle, right, massage your services or your offerings to be able to be profitable at that $5,000 sale price and make it special and make it, you know, something that people want. The entire reason home goods as a store exists is so that American people, mostly women, can feel like they have found a special little deal.

Kevin Dennis (: 15:06

You

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 15:32

like a treasure hunt, that's their whole like business model is treasure hunt because Americans like a deal. So if you can be a company that makes yourself that treasure hunt, they feel like they have found an amazing photographer and amazing florist for a deal, then they feel even that much better about their purchase. They feel like it has value. It's like this weird reverse psychology thing, right? Where...

Kevin Dennis (: 15:34

Mmm.

Mm-hmm. ⁓

Margaux Fraise (: 15:59

There's something in the American landscape where people like a deal or they like to pay a lot of money to feel like something has a lot of value, right? Which is often why when you are priced as a wedding professional in the mid, like the mid range, right? Like for planners, a mid range in a big city like Los Angeles, New York, I just, those are the things I use most often. Cause that's what I know about. Cause I'm here in Los Angeles. If you are a planner and you are pricing yourself between eight and $14,000,

Kevin Dennis (: 16:08

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 16:28

That is a really hard sell for most people. Even though that's really what you should be charging, right? Like that's like an appropriate amount of money for a full planning package. People have a hard time paying that range, but if you bump it up to that more luxury level, right? You got to offer more services because of that. want to feel like they're getting their money's worth or you take it down.

Kevin Dennis (: 16:35

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 16:54

Then you have every person that I've ever coached, right? I do VIP days, I do coaching for wedding planners, every person I've ever coached to bump up their prices to the next level. ⁓ You know, I did one last year with a ⁓ great planner in Montana. And once she did that, she actually sold more. It was easier to do that because people, Americans, they want a deal or they want a Labooboo. Why are people paying 85,

Kevin Dennis (: 17:12

Wow.

Yeah, yeah. ⁓

Margaux Fraise (: 17:20

dollars or however much it is for that ugly little gremlin on their bag. I'm sorry.

That is the hill I will die on. The boo-boos are ugly AF.

Kevin Dennis (: 17:29

And now Louis Vuitton's got him now.

Margaux Fraise (: 17:31

Yes, why are you putting that on a $10,000 purse? I will never know.

But it's because they're rare and they're expensive. And people are assigning a value to that, right? Whether it's LaBooBoo's, whether it's Cabbage Patch Dolls in the 80s, if something's considered rare and valuable, then you can charge a lot of money for it, right? But if you are not a luxury service provider,

Kevin Dennis (: 17:37

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 17:57

and you're gonna charge $20,000, $25,000, $30,000 for a planning package, you better be prepared to back that up. If not, you may wanna consider massaging those services and offering a deal every once in a while.

Kevin Dennis (: 18:04

Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. I love that you match the service to the price. You're not giving the $10,000 price in there. Good one. Good one. All right. So in retail, everything revolves around getting the customer to make a purchase. So how can that buying mindset translate into a service-based business like weddings?

Margaux Fraise (: 18:16

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, service based businesses are interesting, right? Because you're not offering like shoes, right? Like you're not Nike, you're not offering like shoes, right? You're offering a experience. Planners, DJs, ⁓ we're not offering physical things, right? Like the wedding industry is really made up of two specific things, right? Service providers and product providers.

Kevin Dennis (: 18:34

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 19:00

service providers again, or like I said, they're DJs, they're photographers, they're offering services. Things are like caterers, florists, dressmakers, they're offering like physical things that people take away. And so we can look at how people do service-based stuff and how people do brick and mortar, right? So like there are a couple of different things you can do for everyone.

Kevin Dennis (: 19:16

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 19:30

One is limited time offers. I was talking about deals. So limited time offers things that are like, ⁓ Memorial Day sales. Every car dealership in America has a Memorial Day sale. ⁓ Things like a limited number, ⁓ 10 available. I'm gonna be launching a membership for Wedding Pros ⁓ later in July, and I'm offering a founding membership.

Kevin Dennis (: 19:33

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 19:57

for up to a hundred people and they'll get bonuses and they'll get extra stuff and they will get locked in at a lower price for the lifetime that they're in the membership. That's a limited run, right? I'm saying it's only offered for the first hundred people, right? So you can do that, you the first two couples, first five couples, first one couple, whatever it is. And then they feel again, like they've gotten that deal. And then you can offer like there's in the limited offers, there's also like a limited deal, something like a BOGO, Americans.

Kevin Dennis (: 20:04

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 20:27

Love a BOGO. When I was working for Footlocker, we were trying to phase out the BOGO, which is buy one, get one free, buy one, get one half off, whatever it is. And they had overdone it on the BOGO, right? That people would wait, they had trained their customers to wait for that. So I would beware of offering this stuff too often, right? Limited offers should be very limited and you can't offer them too much because then your customers...

Kevin Dennis (: 20:33

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 20:55

will get used to it and they'll just kind of wait. And your customers are not only couples, right? All the vendors out there, sometimes your customers are planners and venues, the ones that are recommending you. And if I know as a planner that you always have a sale every other month, I'm just going to tell my clients to hold off for just a minute so that they can do that. So you want these limited time offers to be special, to be inconsistent, right?

Kevin Dennis (: 21:07

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 21:24

or

like once a year, right? I have a sale for the Wedding Summit series and my education once a year. It's Black Friday every year, right? Because people are in a buying mood, but people also know that that's the only time it comes up. So if they want to get that deal, that's the only time that it happens. So you can do these very interesting limited time deals. You can also like...

Kevin Dennis (: 21:33

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 21:53

A lot of things can be done online that people aren't aware of. When we brought retail as a whole from the brick and mortar store, from your local anthropology, into an online space, there were some interesting things that happened that wedding pros can also take advantage of. So very simple things. I'm all about like, here's some very simple tactile things that you can do.

Kevin Dennis (: 22:05

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 22:21

There is an info bar on the top of your website. There should be. If you're not using it, you need to. Because every retail brand in America, from Gap to JCPenney, like I just mentioned, to Audi cars, utilizes that top bar to tell their potential customers what the one thing they want them to know. And that has been ingrained since the beginning of online space sales.

Kevin Dennis (: 22:24

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 22:50

So people are looking for that. So if you're not utilizing that top bar to tell people you only have two more openings for 2025, or you're having a sale coming up, or you've been featured in Vogue, or whatever that one piece of information that you want people to take away from your website, if that's not on the top bar, you are really missing out because that is something that is so ingrained. Next is a very weird concept, Kevin, that we...

Kevin Dennis (: 22:59

Mmm.

I love, I like

weird, let's go. ⁓

Margaux Fraise (: 23:20

It's

called the nose down effect. Yeah. And yeah, I think I coined this that it might have some other, I've noticed that a lot of the concepts that we talked about when I worked in retail, they have like very high minded psychological names that people are putting out on TikTok now. And I'm like, Oh, I've never heard it called that. We did that all the time. Um, so a lot of them have, have much fancier names, but I just call it the nose down effect. And what it is is.

Kevin Dennis (: 23:23

⁓ okay. I've never heard of that. Okay.

Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 23:48

Studies have shown that people can easier see themselves in a situation, whether that's clothing or another situation, if they can't see the eyes of the person in the photograph, which is why almost every clothing retailer online, they don't have a head. And they do that because for some reason, if you don't see the eyes of the other person, can easily, you can much more easily psychologically imagine yourself wearing that dress.

Kevin Dennis (: 23:57

Mmm.

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 24:16

imagine yourself eating that cake, right? So

while I think that a lot of like, ⁓ wedding pros want to show happy couples, right? We always want to show happy couples. I think that some of them, if you, it's going to be weird, right? If you cut off people from the eyes down and some photographers do this without even realizing it with styled shoots specifically, they'll do it because they're so ingrained to seeing

Kevin Dennis (: 24:25

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 24:42

headless models or things like it's every wedding dress stuff in America is almost always cut off down here unless they're also trying to sell you accessories or something like that. Or they're showing the model from the back and she's not really looking at you. And it's because of this weird psychological phenomenon of nose down. So if you want your clients to, if you are a dressmaker or a suit person, they're probably already doing this, but you can too. You can take advantage of it too if you want.

your ideal client to feel like they're inside of your website in a certain picture, you may wanna try that on a couple photos and see what happens. ⁓ The last one for online stuff is stories.

Kevin Dennis (: 25:18

see the response. I love that.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 25:25

Long before blogs, long before TikTok, long before reels, retailers knew you had to tell a story, right? The story that a brand like PacSun, Pacific Sunwear, the story that they're selling is 180 degrees different from a store like Lane Brian or Coldwater Creek is trying to say, because PacSun is trying to sell this.

Kevin Dennis (: 25:46

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 25:52

California fun, free, outdoor, surfing, skating, lifestyle. And they're selling to their ideal customer, which are teenagers and young adults, right? The same thing can be said for, ⁓ not anthropology, but the other one. ⁓ I'm out. la la la. AeroPostale, maybe some other brands. All brands that are geared towards younger people, their stores are so funny because they are playing loud music, the loudest music you've ever heard.

Kevin Dennis (: 25:53

You

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 26:22

that's bright, bright, bright in there or dark, dark, dark. There's no in between, right? Like either it's really bright or it's really dark. And they are built on time, right? Because they like for you, because teenagers have expendable income. So they want you to buy and get out before you have any time to think about how long you're spending, right? Whereas a Coldwater Creek or Lane Bryan or in anthropology,

Kevin Dennis (: 26:27

Mm-hmm.

You

Margaux Fraise (: 26:49

They're built to keep you inside as long as possible, like a Las Vegas casino, right? Because their ideal client are older women and older women will spend more money given more time. So they have comfortable couches and it's always a nice temperature and the music is soothing and the people are always like really apt to help you rather than, you know, in an H where you cannot get help because they're too busy restocking, right?

Kevin Dennis (: 26:51

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yep.

Margaux Fraise (: 27:16

And it's because they're servicing two different people and they're telling two different stories about the brands, right? And wedding professionals are not doing that as well as I think a lot of other people are. That's why a lot of my education focuses on ideal clients because it is also a holdover from the retail days because if their point is to sell something, they have to know exactly who they're selling to and exactly how to sell it. And you have to tell a story about your brand, about your service.

Kevin Dennis (: 27:22

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Margaux Fraise (: 27:45

All of that. So take that for what it is and make sure that you have that on lock before you're trying to make all this content. think that people, they go right from the brand to the content, right? They're like, I got this shiny website. have these shiny photos. I have this thing. And then they go right to making the reels and this, that other thing. And the part that they miss is the part in the middle that you've probably heard a lot of us educators screaming about for years, which is.

You have to know your ideal client. have to know who you're selling to. You have to tell the story of why they would want to buy from you. And if you don't, it's hard to make sales and they get that from retail, right? Everything from clothing to cars, selling the people, the Subaru people know their customer, right? And they sell to that exact outdoor loving granola cares about the earth. You know what I mean? All that. They have that.

Kevin Dennis (: 28:15

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 28:39

Those people, they know their ideal client has dogs. So there are dogs in abundance in Subaru commercials. They know that those people are more likely to have children. There are children in abundance in Subaru commercials versus a BMW commercial or Lincoln commercial, which is just Matthew McConaughey talking, right? Because those cars are being sold to men, right? That don't have to worry about carrying around the children, don't have to worry about that. They're more social climbers, know, things like that.

Kevin Dennis (: 28:53

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Well, can't go wrong with Matthew. Yeah. Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 29:09

Those brands are telling two different stories. So no matter if you're selling clothes, cars, or weddings, you need to be able to tell the right story. And that is something that is ingrained from retail that people don't really realize.

Kevin Dennis (: 29:22

Yeah, and I love that you mentioned the ideal client because that's where I think a lot of wedding folks, wedding services, people in the industry, that's where they mess up on. don't realize or they're not real with themselves who their ideal client is and I think that's where a lot of them go wrong. that was really good advice. All right. So what are some common point of sales techniques used in retail that event pros can adapt for bookings or up-selling their service?

Margaux Fraise (: 29:50

Right. I mentioned a little bit about it when I was talking about the differences in stores, right? I think that point of sale, okay, so when we're talking about point of sale versus point of purchase, right? And people oftentimes get those confused, right? So point of sale is when you pick up the item, right? We've named the cash register wrong because they call it a POS system, but that's not really right. The point of sale is when you make up your mind to buy something.

Kevin Dennis (: 29:54

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 30:20

And that is different than the point of purchase. The point of purchase is when you put in your credit card, you swipe your credit card, whatever that is. And those are two different things, right? So when we're talking about wedding service providers, right? So let's think about it this way, right? So the point of sale in a Sephora is when I go in and I say, makeup that I use for Mac has been discontinued. This literally happened last week. I need help finding new makeup.

Kevin Dennis (: 30:23

Okay.

Okay.

Hehehehe

Margaux Fraise (: 30:49

And someone, a makeup professional leads me over to the Laura Mercier and they put some on and they do the sell, right? That's the selling, right? So that is what is translated into your website, your TikTok, your Reels, the story that you're trying to tell. She was telling me a story about how this makeup has more coverage, because that's what I like. It has the color that is what I want.

Kevin Dennis (: 31:00

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 31:19

And she was reinforcing it through the stories, the story that I want, which is I want to look basically like I look now, but what I look like now is no longer offered because I changed the formulation. And that's the point of sale. I have been convinced to buy this, this makeup. And then I take the makeup over to the point of purchase. And if you've ever been in a Sephora, you know that the point of purchase is a snake line that has a bunch of travel size things, just like every place in America has.

Kevin Dennis (: 31:30

Yeah.

yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 31:48

point of purchase, last grab items, right? So the same can be true. I think a lot of ⁓ wedding professionals are missing this, which is you sell the service, right? Kevin, you sell your services. What is the top thing that most people buy from you?

Kevin Dennis (: 31:51

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

For us, it's a beaded chandelier. Yeah, yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 32:06

A beaded chandelier, really? Okay.

So when people say, want that, the beaded chandelier, they've already come to you, they've decided they want this beaded chandelier from your socials, your website, whatever. So when they're ready to buy, right? What are some of the additional things that you offer to them that go with that chandelier?

Kevin Dennis (: 32:24

So we

try to get them to get, like, I always say back to the basics. So that's like spotlights, uplights, things that are gonna make it look pretty. Because when they go to book the photo, they only see that, they're seeing the one thing, but they don't realize there's other elements in there that help enhance it and make it look beautiful.

Margaux Fraise (: 32:42

that's the point of service, the last grabs all those little tiny, you know, things or candies in Target or things like that. Well, I think the people in the wedding space are missing some of that, right? You have to know that you have to, you have to have the data points, right? One, one big thing about retail is they know their numbers, right? Traditional retail stores. When I was a traditional retail store manager, and I like to talk about training your employees, like retail store managers.

Kevin Dennis (: 32:44

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 33:12

And one of the big things is they know their numbers. They know what sales numbers they're expected to hit. They know the differences. They know how many sales they had per day. I used to have to fill out a monstrosity of a spreadsheet every day, every single day that I was a retail manager. And that is because they want data points. And I think that wedding pros are not great at that, you know, which is why one of the products

Kevin Dennis (: 33:28

Mm-hmm.

No, I agree. I agree.

Margaux Fraise (: 33:41

One of the standalone like $19 products that's so popular that I sell as an educator is literally a lead inquiry spreadsheet, both in Excel and an air table where people can track their leads and figure out the data points. So as part of that data, if you as a wedding professional can't tell me your top selling package,

Kevin Dennis (: 33:53

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 34:06

That's a problem, right? Because that is a huge data point because if you know the thing that people are coming to you most, right? Even if it's the only thing that you offer, I offer on my website, two things. That does not mean that those are the only two things that get sold, right? It does not mean I don't have a third option that people don't know about, right? But I only sell that secret third option when I've

Kevin Dennis (: 34:07

It is a problem. I agree.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

The in-and-out menu, the secret in-and-out menu.

Margaux Fraise (: 34:35

on my inquiry call realized that people are in the exact situation that's perfect for that offer, right? But if you don't know that that offer that you're getting most often, that beaded chandelier, if you weren't able to tell me that right off the bat, it's gonna be really hard for you to figure out what your travel size items, what your candy items are that you can add on and up those profit margins, right? That is what happens at every retail interaction, every sales interaction in America. When you go to buy a car, I bought a new car last year.

Kevin Dennis (: 34:40

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 35:05

And they were like everything from floor mats to extended warranties to tire packages. I mean, right? are like, well, you obviously need this, right? And they were able to tell me why and some things I picked and some things I didn't, right? But like being able to correctly verbalize these

Kevin Dennis (: 35:09

Mm-hmm.

service packages. Yeah, yeah, you name it. Yeah.

Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 35:32

Add-ons, upgrades, last minute purchases, everything like that. That is inherently something that you can borrow from retail, right? From that point of sale and point of purchase.

Kevin Dennis (: 35:39

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause they, especially with the cars, they get you in there and your, you know, your payment's going to be $650 a month. And then you, by the time you sign for it and walk out, you're paying $850 a month because you've added on so much stuff. But that's where they, you know, they get you with that first, first price. And then you go from there. Cause then at that point you're like, Oh, I can stretch another 150, know, in your head. Yeah. No, that's amazing. All right.

So what is, you're amazing, and I feel like we almost need to do a two-parter because we're getting up on the time, but what is like one retail trend you think ⁓ the wedding industry must start paying attention to?

Margaux Fraise (: 36:11

you

Retail trends. So I think that one thing that has gotten really kind of lost in modern retail is color theory. Because the millennial color palette is gray, gray, gray, and more gray when it comes to retail, right? You think about what certain stores used to look like, and now they're gray.

Kevin Dennis (: 36:30

Hmm.

You

Margaux Fraise (: 36:47

Right? There are very few stores using like really good retail theory, right? Sorry, color theory, because color theory is the reason why sales tags are red, right? It's because you want it to stand out. You want to make it noticed. It's, you know, and all of these things tie back to nature and like our intrinsic things, because in nature, red means venom. means things are in full bloom, like things you should look at, right? People forget that blues and greens are stability.

Kevin Dennis (: 36:52

Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 37:17

That's why almost every tech firm in America started out with a blue or green logo, because people thought tech was fly by night, so they wanted to trick you into thinking that it was going to be a grounded thing. They're grounding, and they're also go indicators, like green is a go indicator, stoplights. ⁓ So they're used for things like logos and pricing, Google Maps, roads, things like that.

Kevin Dennis (: 37:22

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 37:45

But they're also found in nature. The sky and the ocean are green and blue, right? Like they're in grass. They're stable things. I think that we've gotten away from these things that can indicate things that people should look at. Buttons on our website, different things like that. ⁓ Having a logo that doesn't look like everyone else's logo in terms of color, right? ⁓ I was actually raised with what we call seasonal color harmony, which is...

Kevin Dennis (: 37:48

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 38:14

If you've ever like, for women, if you've ever been told like, you're a spring, you're a summer. And now on TikTok, it's like the color swatches and they move them away from the face. ⁓ My mother was a student of the woman who came up with that concept. name is Suzanne Cagle. You can look her up. ⁓ In the 50s, she used to work with Edith Head and a lot of studios ⁓ as ⁓ things went from black and white to color. It was very, very important to, know. And so Color Harmony is just about bringing

Kevin Dennis (: 38:27

well.

Margaux Fraise (: 38:43

the natural things in our world into, you know, how we like go under the radar and like subliminally tell people, click this button, buy this thing, trust my brand, you know? Like these are subconscious things that we've all gotten away from because if you go to my website for my company, harmonycreativestudio.com, right? That's my planning company. ⁓

Kevin Dennis (: 39:10

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 39:12

It is all neutrals, but it's neutrals because that's my color aesthetic. Look here, all neutrals, right? This is a, it's a much different contrast to let's say our mutual friend, Holly Gray, who's all about color. We're always talking about how we're the yin and the yang of the same thing, but I like to do weddings that are minimalist and neutral and Holly likes to do weddings that are colorful and theatrical. And those are two different things in two different clients.

Kevin Dennis (: 39:26

I was thinking of her the whole time.

Yeah.

Yep.

Margaux Fraise (: 39:42

So

I think that most retail, sadly, and also all small businesses, you know, on toward have moved away from color as an indicator of what you can expect from their company to more safe millennial grays and peaches and, know, the millennial pink of it all, right? And everything is kind of gray. Remember the mall used to be so colorful in the nineties, Kevin, like all the stores look different. You could tell immediately like what was going on. And very few...

Kevin Dennis (: 39:58

Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

Margaux Fraise (: 40:11

brands have kept that things like Color Me Mine or the mall, the store in the mall where they do the bears or Build-A-Bear or like Bed Bath, not Bed Bath and Beyond, because that's dead. ⁓ The Candle Place, Bath and Body Works, right? Very few of these places have kept their identities, their color identities. They almost stand out even more now in a sea of millennial gray sameness.

Kevin Dennis (: 40:14

Mm-hmm.

yeah. Yup. I'm beyond.

Bath body works.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 40:38

And in the wedding industry, they tend to go for colors that are like that millennial pink or beige or black and white. So many luxury, quote unquote luxury, right? Whether they are actually luxury or just trying to be luxury. did our last wedding summit series was the luxury edition. We do a different deep dive topic every time. one of the over-providing, the over-preving words of advice from the actual luxury providers were,

Kevin Dennis (: 40:45

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 41:08

your website doesn't have to be black and white to be considered luxury, right? It's not, it's all gonna look the same, right? The mall is all looking the same now and all the wedding stuff is gonna look the same if you don't try to differentiate yourself. So that's something that is.

Kevin Dennis (: 41:11

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I immediately thought

of the Apple Store when you were saying all that because you go in there and everything's very neutral and that's kind of where they go for it.

Margaux Fraise (: 41:34

Yeah. I think that Apple

gets a pass now because things that are so ingrained in Americans' everyday lives almost have a little bit of a pass, right? Like Apple at this point is, they're not even really selling anything. They're just announcing this new thing is available for you, right? Right? Right. So their need to sell something

Kevin Dennis (: 41:47

Mm-hmm.

We get so excited, us Apple nerds.

Margaux Fraise (: 42:04

is low and their need to provide services is high, right? So that's why their stores have changed over the years. One of my past grooms actually worked in their store design and then he was telling me some things and he was basically, that was basically it, that it has to be function over form at this point because they're not really selling anything anymore.

Kevin Dennis (: 42:08

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Well, and even if you go look at Apple, they do their, you know, the releases and they get so excited and they promote those releases and like they just did one two weeks ago about all the operating systems are all changing and they're all going to be like, yeah, and yeah, well, and everything's going to be the number 26 now, you know, so the, the, the number is going to correspond with the year. So like, you know, cause all, all the operating systems are all different numbers starting next year, they're all going to be 26 and they're all going to be. Oh yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 42:36

glass.

Interesting.

Yeah, Remember when they called them things like panther?

Kevin Dennis (: 42:53

Well, they

still, it's funny because they're still calling the Mac, the regular computer, it's Tahoe, but it's 26. So they're all part of California, little pieces of California.

Margaux Fraise (: 43:01

Mm-hmm. I, yeah, I...

I think that just goes with their transcendent at this point. You don't have to think it, because one of the basic rules of selling anything is to not make it too complicated, because that just confuses people. Not to give people too many choices, because that confuses people. But if you are a brand that people trust, that people go to, that they even consider buying at this point, and there are very few brands that

Kevin Dennis (: 43:11

yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 43:37

or stores or anything that feels that way. I think before their troubles over the last couple of months, Target was kind of reaching that level. ⁓ But that just goes to show that sometimes the things you do on the back end can affect all the good things that your store is doing. Because the things that Target's doing on the back end is affecting their front end, even though their stores and their products and all of that has stayed exactly the same. So we can't.

Kevin Dennis (: 43:39

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 44:05

always rely on everything that's front-facing to the customer. We have to do the internal stuff as well.

Kevin Dennis (: 44:12

So, we wrap up, what's the one thing that someone can do immediately that you think of everything we talked about? Like the ⁓ low hanging fruit that we have.

Margaux Fraise (: 44:15

Yep.

I think

figuring out your data points, right? Figuring out exactly where your leads are coming from, figuring out exactly what you're selling, figuring out your price points for selling for that, especially if you are not a solopreneur, if you're a catering company, stuff like that, you should already have all that stuff on lockdown. A large AV company like yours probably has all that on lockdown. Just because again,

Kevin Dennis (: 44:28

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 44:50

At a retail level, retail managers are expected to hit sales numbers. And some of the most ⁓ profitable, great companies in the wedding industry, the large ones that you've heard of, or the large catering brands or things like that, it's because they have sales managers that know their quotas. They know exactly where their numbers are coming from. So if you as a small business don't have those, it's really hard to compete, to level up, to really grow a business, to make add-ons, to...

Kevin Dennis (: 44:55

Mm-hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 45:19

level up those profit margins the way a retail store would do, right? The retail stores get those numbers so they can tell. Like when I was working for Foot Locker, we could tell Nike sweatsuits sold 6X more times than Adidas sweatsuits. We could tell that Adidas Samba shoes, pardon me, this is 1999, ⁓ we're selling, they're bad. We're selling at a rate of 10X the Vans, like whatever it was, right?

And so we knew which trends to lean into and which ones to lean back from, right? And so wedding professionals need to start doing that as well because those are like basic business concepts that I think because we're a service-based industry for the most part, because we're leaning into love and all of that, we sometimes forget the like very basic business tenants that are a part of it. So that's like the first thing I would say, you don't have to get the...

Kevin Dennis (: 46:11

Yeah.

Margaux Fraise (: 46:18

lead tracker that I sell, but you can make an Excel spreadsheet and start tracking everything yourself. And you will be able to see data points, right? Like ⁓ one person that bought that was able to see that like they were missing an entire like ⁓ vendor that kept referring them stuff that had a higher booking rate than other people, right? So they're like, I got to make sure this person's got all of my most current stuff that, know, but just little things you'll see, right? And so I think that

Kevin Dennis (: 46:34

wow.

Margaux Fraise (: 46:45

That is something that people can start doing now, whether before they start overhauling their wholesale system, before they start overhauling their website or the colors or anything that I was talking about is like purely at a data driven point is something that think people need to start doing. Yeah.

Kevin Dennis (: 47:01

know your numbers. So

that's the most important. All right. So Margot, how can someone get in contact with you and also the summit?

Margaux Fraise (: 47:12

Yeah, absolutely. So probably the easiest way to follow me is my wedding planning business is Instagram, that's at Harmony Creative. ⁓ The Wedding Summit series, I know that this is gonna go live early in July. So we actually have our next free event every year during the summer, we have a summer camp. So we have, it's a really low pressure event. There's like one session a day, right? We don't wanna mess anybody up. You don't have to sign up for anything. You just have to join our Facebook group. So I'll give you that link so you can tell people where to go.

Kevin Dennis (: 47:24

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Margaux Fraise (: 47:42

It's really fun. We have like a scavenger hunt game. And I'm trying to figure out like the most current topics for people to talk about. So we're talking about like, you know, running a business in this economy, know, reels, you know, really of the moment subject matter, because our regular events go really deep into one topic. Like in April, we had our luxury summit. So we did luxury, four days of luxury topics.

Kevin Dennis (: 47:50

Hmm.

Margaux Fraise (: 48:10

We hit luxury from every topic. Last year it was marketing. We hit marketing from every topic. But the summer camp is really easy breezy. It's a good entry point. If people aren't aware of the summit, again, it's free. It's all online. It is from July 14th through 18th, and it all happens in our Facebook group.

Kevin Dennis (: 48:10

Wow. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Love it. All right. We'll have all that information and Margo's information in our show notes and we'll be happy to share all that stuff out. So Margo, can't thank you enough for being here. Also, you mentioned Holly. I wanted to bring up. never, I think of her every time I wear something gray, like literally. And I wear a lot of gray. So I'm always thinking of Holly. So it's always like, I know. I always go, I will, I always go, Holly would not approve is what I was like. Holly would not approve. So, but anyway.

Margaux Fraise (: 48:38

You

No.

Which is funny because she's anything but gray. That's the whole point.

You're a guy,

it's a little different. Absolutely, well, thank you so much for having me. It's always great to kind of revisit like a random knowledge base that I have that's different than a lot of other people. So I appreciate it.

Kevin Dennis (: 48:56

I know it is, but it is what it is. anyway.

Yeah.

No, and I yeah,

it was very informative and there's so much like you said with the buying habits and all that that I think a lot of us sweating pros are missing out on so I thank you for your knowledge and your expertise and we will have all of Margo's like I said all our information in our show notes and we'll get it out to everyone. So thank you. We'll see you next time

Margaux Fraise (: 49:25

Thanks, bye everyone.