It’s closing time on a Thursday, but InsideOut-Garden Visions isn’t closing just yet. Instead, the staff of the downtown Corvallis specialty store is working late, putting out product samples, calling names for prize give-aways and arranging a table of snack crackers, cookies and soft drinks.

Welcome to Girls’ Night Out, an after-hours, invitation-only shopping event for InsideOut’s best customers.

“We do it about every six months,” said co-owner Susan MacNeil. “We send out e-mails and mailers to everybody on our list.”

For regular customer Laura Trevisiol, who lives in Corvallis but works in Albany, it’s a little slice of heaven.

“It’s nice to be able to not have to pack everything in on the weekends,” she said, adding some harvest candles to a small pile of treasures accumulating on the counter. “It’s something to do between work and home.”

Cindy Serrao, an independent sales rep for 32 product lines, including Votivo candles and Picnic Time baskets, is on hand to provide some extra personal attention to the women prowling blissfully among the shelves. It’s the second after-hours event she’s worked at InsideOut, but she’s done similar promotions at other retailers around the region, and she says they’re always a hit with customers.

“Girls love to do that kind of thing — grab a friend and go shopping,” Serrao said. “Having it outside normal hours, it’s a treat. It’s a date to go shopping for you and a friend.”

After-hours sales promotions are a national trend that is being enthusiastically embraced by Corvallis retailers. Among the locals that have tried the tactic are Grass Roots Books & Music, Animal Crackers Pet Supply and a gaggle of women’s boutiques, including Zooey’s, Miss Meers and Sibling Revelry.

Shoetini’s has done a number of different after-hours events, including “shoe parties” where a dozen or so friends get together in the store to sip drinks, nibble hors d’oeuvres and try on the latest pumps, sandals and stilettoes.

“It’s a very non-pressured environment,” said co-owner Sonja Lee. “When you have 10 or 15 or more people there, nobody feels singled out.”

Part of the appeal involves making customers feel special.

Last month, as part of a “Norway Days” promotion of its popular Ekornes furniture line, The Inkwell Home Store sent out 1,700 invitations to an evening get-together at the store. About 75 people showed up for the event, where a factory representative was on hand to extol the virtues of the Norwegian company’s chairs, which sell for $1,000 to $2,000 a pop. There was plenty of wine to lubricate the proceedings, and Ekornes even shipped in smoked salmon and three different kinds of cheese.

Inkwell co-owner Pat Lampton said it’s hard to tell how many chairs were sold as a direct result of the promotion, but he expects to reap some benefit over time.

“I don’t think you can make a direct correlation,” he said. “Some of those sales won’t occur until the end of the year or after the start of the year.”

That’s how Ken Oefelein of Gracewinds Music looks at his latest promotion, a “guitar tasting” held last Thursday to promote several lines of high-end acoustic guitars.

“Maybe you’ll sell one that night, and then the sales will ripple in after that,” he said. “It’s more about planting seeds.”

Companies all over the country have tapped into the power of this kind of promotion, said Hal Koenig, an associate professor of marketing at Oregon State University who has done research on the subject.

“It ties into a concept we’re referring to as brand community,” Koenig said. “The retailer and the manufacturer are trying to bring these people together so they can further cement the bond between the customers and themselves.”

Company-centered promotions do that in several ways, Koenig said.

To start with, they tend to reinforce whatever cachet a brand already has, while mingling with other customers creates a feeling of belonging to a larger community. Talking to a factory representative cultivates a sense of personal connection to the company, and getting in-depth information about a favorite product can translate into a sense of personal identification.

Some companies, such as the makers of Dewalt power tools and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, have become highly skilled at engendering that sort of identification in their customers, according to Koenig.

“You see yourself as a Dewalt user or a Harley rider, so that product becomes a part of who you are,” he said.

Bennett Hall is the business editor for the Gazette-Times. He can be reached at 758-9529 or

bennett.hall@lee.net.