As a retail store owner or manager, you're no doubt aware that certain space on store shelves is highly coveted by manufacturers and that the middle, eye-level shelves are most desirable. In many areas, manufacturers are willing to pay dearly to have access to the choicest retail shelving spots in a store because they know that preferential product placement will garner them more and faster sales. No area in a store is more valuable for product display than at the end of an aisle on an endcap.
As far as retail shelving goes, endcaps are number one, premium space. As a retailer, they allow you to accomplish a number of goals, all geared toward boosting sales. They:
- Bring eye-catching, focused awareness to a product or products
- Encourage impulse buys
- Display products by themselves, away from competing brands
- When utilizing a 270° configuration endcap, allow product viewing from three separate directions, providing maximum exposure
It's All About Product Visibility
Product presentation is key in any retail setting, and proper presentation includes maximum visibility on clean, attractive, modern-looking retail shelving. You want your shelving displays to attract customers as soon as they see them, and few displays can accomplish this better than a well-stocked endcap.
In today's modern retail environments, especially large stores displaying thousands of products (such as grocers), there's been a tendency for more attention to be paid to perimeter displays than those in the center of the store. It's been learned that shoppers are often reluctant to enter long aisles that are arrow-straight and filled exclusively with straight-line, metal retail shelving filled with product upon product upon product, many of which simply blend in one to another. Some interesting solutions, however, have been found to help overcome this trend.
Getting Rid of the Edge
Top-selling store shelf and fixture manufactures like Madix, an industry leader, are now offering a whole line of shelving options to transform the conventional straight line, sharp-edge look of many retail spaces into something softer, easier on the eyes, and more customer friendly. Old-style gondola shelving, for example, is quickly giving way to curved systems that still incorporate the gondola shelving pieces you already have, but that add radius curves to get rid of that standard straight-line look. Long, sweeping curves give a panoramic effect that's much more organic in nature than straight lines. These curved displays are more inviting to the eye and more effective at displaying the items they hold.
Top it Off with a Modern Endcap
Radius endcaps, wraparounds, wooden end panels with radius corners, and wire display end panels are just some of the options now available to dress up the ends of your gondolas. 270° wrap around endcaps give super high visibility to the items they're holding since they can be viewed from any of three different directions.
Shorter, curved aisle displays with radius endcaps allow you to look down the aisle and see the endcap of the next section of curved or concave shelving rather than just viewing the other side of the retail area.
Traditional store center fixture runs typically extend as much as 30' and more, leaving little room for the use of endcaps which, again, represent a store's prime real estate. Shorter runs with endcaps that are placed in a staggered fashion so that coming down one aisle you'll be directly faced with an endcap is ideal. Specialized Y-gondolas are capable of significantly expanding the amount of product that can be displayed on one single endcap.
Make the most of your premium endcap space. Use the above ideas to help improve product visibility and, subsequently, boost your bottom line.
