He’s referring, of course, to the VitrineMedia Backlit LED screens that have given the shopfront of his once dour premises on the town’s main street a vibrant facelift, increased traffic to the windows and contributed to a noticeable rise in sales since First National Gerringong won the inaugural ‘Pimp my Shopfront’ competition in late 2016 and as its prize, received an installation valued at $10,000.
The competition – now in its second year with entries closing in early November and the winner to be announced later in the month – is the brainchild of VitrineMedia Managing Director Mike Toweel.
It calls on real estate agencies to send in a photograph of their daggy shopfront, along with a motivation as to why it deserves a facelift. The agency deemed most in need then wins the free VitrineMedia installation.
Jason is quick to encourage as many real estate agents as possible to put in submissions as he says the victory has proved to be life-changing for the company.
“Ever since the screens went in in December 2016 there has been a marked increase in window visitations which have, in turn, boosted sales and done wonders for morale around the office,” he said.
“On the back of this positive experience and with us recently acquiring a second office in a neighbouring town, one of our top priorities in 2018 is to kit it out with VitrineMedia screens.
“After all, it’s a numbers game in our industry and the VitrineMedia experience reinforces the belief that the more visitations we have, the more listings we receive and the greater our sales. As I said, these screens are visitation magnets.”
On the ‘Pimp my Shopfront’ experience, Jason said it was just one of those fortuitous moments as the agency had beefed up its website to increase traffic and numbers and had just turned its attention to the rather tired looking 30-year-old window displays when he came across the competition in Elite Agent.
“It immediately changed our thinking from perhaps a television screen carrying our property listings on a continuous loop to the VitrineMedia solution,” he explained.
“Although we didn’t particularly like our old displays, we did like the fact that they featured multiple listings simultaneously…and this is what VitrineMedia offers, only in a cleaner, sharper, more colourful and visually exciting and inviting manner.
“We also had concerns with the television approach as there’s a real chance of someone catching the tail end of a listing they’re interested in and then having to wait a good few minutes for its return…or in all likelihood, move on before it does.
“We’ve been impressed with everything about VitrineMedia, from their assistance in coming up with the best possible window display given our narrow frontage to the alacrity with which they attended to the installation.
“It was a mere matter of weeks between winning the competition and having the screens up and running, with every element handled in the most professional manner.”
