Never underestimate the power of publicity. Jeanne Milne, owner of Calgary-based retail store The Art of Hardware, doesn’t. In fact, she has done her very best to feed the publicity machine.

After her home-accents store had been featured in such media as HGTV’s program House and Home and in full-colour spreads in the Calgary Herald, Milne says the sales impact was immediately noticeable.

‘Any editorial coverage you get is phenomenal,’ explains Milne. ‘As soon as those [stories] hit the press, we were all hands on deck in the store. We get people who have cut out articles and are carrying them around and maybe four months later will come into the store. [Coverage is] far more effective than any ad you could place anywhere.’

By August, Milne hopes to have hammered out the details for a second location – likely in either Alberta, B.C. or Manitoba. And in about four years, she will seek to expand into Ontario and Nova Scotia.

All in due time, though, as Milne knows from experience that growth requires careful planning. Her Calgary store has grown 70% in sales in each of its first and second years and she expects to increase at least that much again this year.

‘We raised capital not just for the products in the store and the physical space of the store, but also we saw the marketing aspects of it as equally important,’ says Milne.

‘With all the press we were able to get, it made a difference.’

The Art of Hardware – which opened in September 2000 – stocks some 2,500 different styles of accessories for doors, sinks and cabinets in prices that range from $1.50 to $3,000. While the store targets those 35 to 55 in the middle to upper income bracket, Milne says there are options available for every budget.

‘If you see something in a magazine and its on the high end and is beyond your means, we can supply similar-looking products that would achieve the same look [at a lower price].’

Milne started up The Art of Hardware because of her love for retail, as well as her fondness for home-accent hardware. Prior to opening the store, she had her own retail analysis consulting company, Profit Matters, and was also the director of marketing for shoemaker Bata’s Eastern Europe division. She says her past consulting experience has given her the tools to understand what makes retail success: it’s the details that matter most.

‘[With] retail, you have to have everything right,’ says Milne. ‘The feel of the store has to match whatever printed material you have, which has to match the product or service offering. If there’s something that doesn’t quite fit, it’s hard to attract and retain the customer.

‘Retail is the ultimate challenge because so many aspects of the business plan have to be bang-on.’

For the store opening, Milne explains she contacted every person in her repertoire and invited press, including CBC Calgary news, to cover the event. The Art of Hardware ended up landing on the six o’clock news.

Ever since, Milne has continued to feed publicity by sending out press releases about new products and new store happenings to press and key people in the design industry every three to four weeks.

Her store has been featured three times in the Calgary Herald, as well as shelter magazines like Style At Home and Canadian House and Home, both based in Toronto.

After Art of Hardware’s copper sinks were featured in the latter, Milne says sales increased significantly. ‘When [press] walk in, they say, ‘We have to do a story’ because the look is so different, we’re so unique and the product selection is so vast. It fed on itself, and we just kept feeding it.’

Part of Milne’s business plan included a focus on creating a fun, friendly store environment. The gallery-style loft space – which was a finalist in commercial real estate firm Cadillac Fairview’s 2002 Achievement in New Retail Concepts (ARC) awards – is meant to offer a tactile experience.

‘Customers can come in, take off their coats, and spread out their plans on our table, and we’ll start pulling products off the shelves. It’s a fun environment, working with the homeowner or the architect in putting together their projects. Hardware is really tactile – people like to touch it, so everything in the store has a hands-on approach.’

Calgary agency Ogilvy & Mather created an ad campaign for Art of Hardware that ran in local magazines like Avenue and Western Living in the fall of 2000. The ad features a bedroom that has apparently suffered a break-in, as evidenced by the broken glass on the floor – but the only items missing are the knobs on the chest of drawers.

E-mail and word of mouth have also been effective at spurring buzz for the store. There are about 1,000 consumers in The Art of Hardware’s e-mail database and about 30 people on Milne’s media list.

‘People come in, they love the store and the environment and they tell two friends and it grows from there,’ says Milne. ‘We had a couple of designers in last week who said, ‘Six different people in the last four months have told us we have to come in’ and we get that all the time.’ Customers have been ordering products via e-mail, and they will soon be able to order on the store’s Web site – dubbed its second store location by Milne.

Milne says her store speaks to a larger social trend. ‘People’s houses are no longer just a functional thing, they really are an extension of themselves,’ she explains. ‘People are spending more time in their houses, they’re travelling less and they want [their home] to be a reflection of who they are.’