Editor's Note: Greg Gorman of GMG Design of St. Louis, a retail design consulting firm, partnered with Bledsoe Rentals, Lee's Summit, Mo., owner Tom Fouts and a fixture manufacturer to develop a great retail environment and experience.

Bledsoe Rentals now more closely resembles a typical shopping environment than a rental equipment store. And it has been working. Customers notice the shiny clean colorful floor designs and entrance logo inset. The suspended ceiling pads of simple black T-grid add intimacy over the entrance and the service counter and serve as a perfect way to suspend pendant lighting and track fixtures. The fixtures are all custom-made. The materials - corrugated metal panels, chrome-plated tubing and clear-coated MDF boards - support the nature of the tool rental business.

The last part of the interior design package was the addition of the upper wall and service counter graphics - photographs of Bledsoe equipment combined with service messages.

The typical residential or light construction customer regularly visits grocery stores, shopping centers, discount stores, restaurants and other specific retail locations. These businesses are concerned with how their interior image is perceived by their customers, and spend money to improve first and last impressions.

The same customers visit rental stores for rental equipment and add-on items.

I rent equipment in the spring and summer to do yard work and am never surprised by the dirt-covered, solid-color vinyl tile, equipment caked with soil and grease, poor merchandising and few supplies or hardware for sale. And sometimes, I am forced to deal with unfriendly counter employees.

If this sounds familiar, you really need to think about your future. Customers will find alternatives to avoid negative experiences. My neighbors and I have gotten together to purchase some equipment that we use regularly to avoid the local rental store.

So what can you do to improve your business? Check the list below, prioritize and get moving.

• Make sure that the floors are clean - especially in the main entrance and aisle areas. The main entrance is a key focal point and a perfect location for inset company logos and mattes with messages.
• Make sure the service desk is easy to locate - not necessarily in the front. It can be located anywhere. In fact, a basic rule in retail is to place that which customers are intending to find (in this case the counter) in the back or to the side. This forces them to walk through and past items that they may not have even thought they would discover in your store.

Also, service counters should not be cluttered with paperwork, merchandise and signage.

• Lighting is so important and is often underestimated in independent stores. Standard lighting conditions are recessed, suspended or surface-mounted fluorescent light fixtures. This works well for general illumination, but to get better lighting and highlight key areas, consider suspended metal or glass shade lights. They can be located over the service counter, main entrance or key floor focal areas. You also can use adjustable track lighting along the walls to highlight upper wall or merchandise areas. Keep in mind that lighting supports image through design, material choices and color.
• Display fixtures do not have to be cold, boring metal gondolas. Endcaps can be a different design and still serve the same function.
• Graphics and signage can really add life to a retail environment. Some perfect locations are the back and/or side walls of the service counter, blank upper wall areas and tops of floor-display units. Graphics can support brands and services. Lifestyle graphics are timeless and a good long-term investment.
• Employees should be friendly. Nobody enjoys dealing with an unhappy salesperson. Customers should be greeted, serviced and thanked for their business.

Having a positive retail environment is not difficult to achieve and doesn't take much time. It does take just a bit more money, but remember that you have to spend money to make money and the investment, if properly prioritized, will pay for itself.