10 SMALL BUSINESSES

10 DESIGNERS

10 MAKEOVERS

10 DAYS

MAIN ST MAKEOVER

Elderly Instruments 1100 N. Washington Ave.

My name is Jessica. I'm a decorator for IKEA.

And I was assigned Elderly Instruments for the IKEA Main St. makeover.

Come on in. My name is Stan Werbin. I own Elderly Instruments.

We sell guitars, banjos, mandolins, amplifiers, basses. You name it.

Anything related to guitars and fretted string instruments.

Right now it's five buildings converged into one.

So there were many different areas that had a lot of needs.

We started off with 120 square feet and wound up with around 5000.

It took up the whole building.

You might notice that there's storage everywhere.

This is our shipping department.

Got a machine room in here. Mail-order department here.

More offices over here. We're into the receiving area.

Private lessons room. Where our web magic happens.

Rows and rows and rows and rows and also rows and rows.

Lots of cases and gig bags.

Obviously instruments or cases. These are cases, I think, here.

Are you confused as to where you are?

We have so many possible ways to improve what we have here that we haven't homed in on what we want at this point.

I know we're looking towards something more in the public area.

We'll move on through here.

Or can we do this?

PLANNING THE MAKEOVER November 2007

Beautiful doors, huh? Hi, Joey.

Nice to see you again. A little bit colder than last time. This is Jessica.

Elderly Instruments is a destination for people not only in Lansing or not only in Michigan or the US even.

People come from all over.

They have very effective merchandizing of all their guitars.

It's a huge place. So we had to be able to make a definite difference and choose an area or a couple of areas to work with.

I must admit that when I had been here last time ...

It was, "Ok, what are we going to do?" There were so many possibilities.

It can be rather intimidating. It's a large building.

So what we're going to do ...

We want to make this place more welcoming by refreshing your lobby, your restrooms.

And have a really nice relaxed area for families who are here with somebody crazy about guitars.

But the entryway or lobby as such had a lot of display cases, information...

They have this counter where somebody's always sitting.

A lot of different things going on, but in a quite unstructured way.

This was the first thing that bothered me. Bothered? What is this?

You said it looks like a temporary solution because it's a catering table.

But it seems to be very important.

Here we check instruments as they come in and as they leave.

Or the boxes. So people don't leave with something.

Right? Here I think we can give you a solid wood countertop.

Or something in beech that takes up all the warm wood colors.

- That would be nice.

- We have some funky legs.

They have a traditional shape, but they're in metal so that would then echo the tin ceiling.

Maybe a little nicer chair. Because some of your pieces are beautiful.

Like the wooden bench, those glass door cabinets, etc.

I want to keep them, but ...

Here it would be so cool to paint this in a jeans-blue color. Like that.

- That's great. In a jeans-color.

- Yeah.

Kind of in a sober dark with a silver ceiling or tin-colored ceiling.

And a darker blue classy look here when you come into the ...

I have to think about that. It'll take a moment to wrap my head around.

I understand.

Jerry is very honest.

He really voiced his opinions as to what he thought would work and not work.

But for the most part they pretty much went along with what we had discussed and Mats' vision and idea of what we want to achieve in Elderly.

It's almost like small rooms or like powder rooms.

You can paint them gold.

Because it's a place where you spend only ... not a long time.

Whereas in a room like a living room maybe you should be a bit calmer.

But somewhere which is just a passageway or something can be quite extreme. And I think that could be really nice.

It would be fun to give it a different feel.

And for the bathrooms maybe use that on the chair rail and a lighter one above.

And do the ceiling and everything. And a chandelier. A little bit whimsical.

That sounds fine.

- That was the plan.

- Sounds good.

It's been a pleasure, really. And I'm going to leave Jessica here with you.

- I have to rush to my next business.

- Thank you very much.

Oh, look at this one.

Wow.

I worked a lot with Jerry. I made it a point to sit down and talk to who is at the front desk.

And just ... I observed a lot. And asked a lot of questions making sure I cover what their needs are.

Something where we can have information out and get a little more organized.

It's important because you don't want to change who they are.

We need stuff without arms. They get in the way.

Benches work well for some customers. Others prefer stools.

It's an incredible building. Great architecture.

If you walk through the showroom, they have a lot of antiques.

So it's just a matter of incorporating our pieces with what they have.

But we need to clean this up.

THE MAKEOVER January 2008

We're back at Elderly.

What we basically focused on was the vestibule, main entrance area two bathrooms and a soft-seating area.

The entrance area is where it's going to be blown up a lot.

We're going to paint the walls and the ceilings as well.

We're going to hang fixtures that look like from the period of this space.

Everything is about contacts. You have to look at where you are.

Elderly has beautiful woodwork.

And display cases like antiques.

Emphasize that. Take away everything unnecessary.

We're organizing it in a more well-presented way.

We're going to reuse this piece of furniture and place it over here.

This area is going to be a place where they can store their catalogs.

And over in this area right over here is going to be a tall bookcase which is going to house their leaflets and extra paperwork.

Start by showing the merchandize and then go into the information.

Just coming in, the information is too early.

First you have to tell people who you are what your business is, what you're selling and then you might be interested in asking questions.

We started out with paint. We painted the ceiling.

It's actually a tin ceiling, and you couldn't see the details.

We painted it a really soft grey color to highlight the details.

They're going ahead and finish painting the entrance, foyer two bathrooms as well as the walls.

So all the painting should be completed today.

The color we wanted on the walls was a mixture of an old-world classic blue.

It needs a bit of inspiration of faded jeans.

When they had done the first coat, I came by.

And I don't know what happened.

It's a little more intense than I thought.

Basically we did one coat, and it was "Ahhh!"

A very intense electric blue that would just not do what we needed.

If it was greyer it would look more ...

More ... sophisticated.

It was far from what anyone of us had expected.

I was freaking out. It's blue, it's blue, it's blue.

- Should we go ahead and ...?

- I'm thinking. I'm thinking.

I just want to dull it.

It was too, as Mats would say, violent blue.

Too violent and not so sophisticated.

- This one.

- Or that one.

So we had an emergency and had to run and get 4 new gallons of paint.

We need something that is a little more grey down here.

Yeah, now we got it.

It accents the wood on the walls, and all the lighting we used is more directional lighting, so it creates this great mood.

Will everybody be quite surprised?

I think they'll be quite surprised. They'll be confused.

They'll be confused by color and a clean hallway, so ...

They seem happy. They noticed that the smell in the bathrooms is gone.

There was a really foul stench in there. The guys even said it was bad.

That was definitely a neglected area.

We painted the walls a few tones lighter. We gave them a new sink cabinets as well as a large mirror. And lighting too.

On the third floor we turned this corner and I saw this enormous painting on the wall.

It was just beautiful. And so the idea was to take that piece clean it up a little bit and hang it in the men's bathroom.

It came out really beautiful.

- And you found that?

- Yes, we found this upstairs.

We don't know who he is.

But they're going to make up a story of who he is.

Okay.

In their big instrument room we put a rug.

A really nice Oriental rug, but totally no pattern.

And chaise longues in blue and white stripes.

Place it here at a slight angle.

They're cool and comfortable. The top is down-filled.

The slipcovers are very durable and removable so you can wash them.

People can kick back, relax and enjoy being here and listening to the music.

This is for little kids, so they can hang out and play.

We have a little rollercoaster here to keep them entertained.

Don't you remember this? You can be here for hours.

This area is now working for wives or girlfriends or just guys sitting around playing.

One would think that it's a challenge for IKEA.

The modern, home-furnishing company with bright colors and modern lines to be relevant to a company in an old building selling old, antique instruments.

But it wasn't so hard because we have quite a bit of traditional cabinetry.

At IKEA we have a country line that has a lot of chunky furniture.

I knew that that would find a home there at Elderly.

This is going in the entrance of Elderly.

It's going to house a lot of their small, little instruments.

Okay, I got it. Wait...!

It was just an incredible experience working with the people at Elderly.

In the beginning, they were, "Is IKEA coming in?"

"Will they capture who we are?"

But the amount of help in the ownership they took on with this project was really great.

It was lovely to see the process.

We made the whole place darker, so we could work more with light.

To be able to focus on the various things.

Notice boards for various services and beautiful display cases with a spotlight on each one, so you actually see them.

They're very happy. They didn't know what to expect.

They're in shock.

Several things I thought I'd never see. The fall of Communism the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the hallway getting re-done.

The difference is breathtaking.

After

The catalogs are an important part of our business and these get them up off the floor and de-clutter them.

And here ... That was original. And shifting the location was great.

The new set-up table looks great. It has a nice old-time feel to it.

Much more relaxed and comfortable.

Some employees were in a slight panic.

They heard IKEA and thought chrome and birch.

We had to reassure that we weren't going to change the whole feel of the store.

It definitely fits the store now.

It's a lot more inviting.

I'm very happy as to how it turned out.

I'd say by far the biggest change has been in the bathrooms.

The men's room for years sported a nice, vintage Turkish prison look.

The change has been spectacular.

So many people have said that they're happy to use the washrooms because before it was something that they weren't looking forward to.

This painting we pulled from our vault on the 3rd floor.

It's a very famous person. P. McGullicuddy the third.

Founder of an extremely secret society.

It's not just about the looks. It's how does this place work?

How is it functional? Where do the display cases go?

Where does the information go? What is a good flow in this area?

That's where I think IKEA actually made the biggest difference.

And Jessica made the biggest difference.

IKEA BUSINESS A better life at work