WASHINGTON — DJ ToxSick drew an audience one recent Saturday as his crew formed a circle around his turntables inside the Puma store at the Tysons Corner mall in northern Virginia. With hip-hop music blasting, each takes a turn in the middle, popping and locking as they hype each other and the crowd.
“Oh, that’s hot,” Fat Rawk says, one hand twirling a washcloth in the air.
Onlookers bob their heads to the pulsing bass, and most eventually make their way through the doors and into the store.
Store managers like what they see at this tryout. When the regular DJ shows up for her gig, she learns she’s been replaced. ToxSick and his Latino-Asian entourage of break dancers attract a different kind of crowd.
Mall stores, including Metropark in Denver’s Cherry Creek Shopping Center, are increasingly relying on DJs as in-house entertainment, not just for special events but as a staple of high-traffic weekend shopping.
They can lower sales resistance, alter moods and keep customers around longer, research shows. More important, DJs help define a store’s image and provide audio cues to shoppers about who does and doesn’t belong. Metropark has in-store DJs every Saturday.
“Music is a great audience sorter,” says James Kellaris, marketing professor at the University of Cincinnati who has studied the influence of music on buying behavior. “It’s a nonverbal sign that says who the store is seeking to service.”
And unlike visual stimuli — sale signs, window displays — it can’t be ignored.
“We can turn away or close our eyes,” says Kellaris, “but we are not endowed with ear lids, so auditory attention is automatic.”
Cusp, a boutique for women, opened a store at Tysons Corner two years ago. It sells trendy designer wares, such as 7 for All Mankind jeans, Tory Burch handbags and Shu Uemura eyelash curlers. It relied on DJs from the start, stationing them in the middle of the store, like a display.
Cusp doesn’t tell its DJs what to play, it just asks them to pick up a vibe from shoppers.
“It does work. It provides a cool, relaxed atmosphere,” says Davika Thompson, Cusp’s public relations and marketing manager. In choosing a DJ, she says, “We like for her to be an ‘it girl.’ A girl who knows how to rock her own look, has her own individual style but doesn’t get too insane with it.”
Les Talusan (a.k.a. the Pinstriped Rebel) is that chick. Name-brand clothes and high-end fashion aren’t her thing — her black square Bebe frames being the exception. One recent Saturday she wears skinny dark jeans, a nondescript, loose-fitting gray button-up and black flip-flops, toenails unpainted. Her wedding band serves as her only adornment. She steps it up a bit on another Saturday, wearing yellow ballet flats and a black V-neck dress. But it’s from Target.
“I never thought I was cool,” she says. “I still don’t think I’m cool. I just love music.”
The mall circuit has become prime territory for up-and-coming DJs and those slightly past their prime. In the pantheon of gigs, it has its advantages and its downsides. It’s not a party atmosphere in which DJs are trying to get people onto the dance floor, but they also aren’t required to play a certain set list or follow a formula.
DJs can make as much as $1,000 for a full day at department stores such as Lord & Taylor. Over at Puma, they are given a shirt, a jacket and a pair of shoes as payment.
Puma has a rotating schedule of DJs, just as clubs do, to make each weekend outing a little different.
Mall DJs need to recognize that they are never the main attraction — the merchandise is. Their job is to keep people moving, yet deflect attention from themselves.
Sometimes that’s hard to do. Particularly when female shoppers have husbands, boyfriends or kids in tow.
The men and children often wander over to the DJ, giving the wives, girlfriends and mothers the time and space to browse freely.
