The Importance of Your Pharmacy Shelving Selections

Pharmacy shelving is one of the most important aspects of any pharmacy design. In the front end of the store it's the shelving and other fixtures that display your merchandise, hopefully to its fullest advantage, and make what you have to offer logically arranged, easily accessible and attractively shown. Nice looking, strategically placed pharmacy shelving throughout your merchandising area can either set the stage for your customers to have an enjoyable and fulfilling shopping experience or misplaced, unattractive shelves can leave them feeling something altogether different.

Properly placed, the gondola shelving used in the center area of the store can guide your customers along a prearranged footpath that allows them to view the maximum number of departments as they make their way from the front entrance to the rear of the store where you've located some of your most popular items and the prescription drop-off counter. These shelves are used to create aisles and can act as temporary, movable walls and even enhance security by allowing staff to easily keep an eye on shoppers.

Back-End Setup

The pharmacy shelving used in your store's front end should be functional at organizing your sales merchandise and also aesthetically pleasing to your visitors, utilizing psychological principles proven to encourage customers to interact with your merchandising displays and to be tempted to make purchases.

In the back end, the purpose of the shelves you have installed is to contain your stocks safely and securely and to be set up in ways that are designed to improve back-end organization and workflow. Unlike in the front merchandising area where shelves should ideally be no higher than head height, in the back end they can be higher and need not be necessarily attractive as much as being geared toward functional utility.

Create a Floor Plan That Works

Although prescription medication sales is likely the major revenue producer in your pharmacy, the successful sale of non-prescription medicines and other front-end merchandise is vital if you're going to keep your customers coming back and have them leave the store with more than just their prescriptions in hand. Setting up your display shelves and other display fixtures with this in mind, you should:

• Dedicate the store entry area for the display of seasonal, holiday or especially fast-moving, high margin items. This is an important area of the store that's sometimes overlooked. Include some unique and/or quirky items here and make sure to change this display section out regularly, at least monthly.
• Duplicate your store entry area display in other places within the store in case it was missed earlier. Maybe passersby intend to go back later to have another look, but this gives them a second opportunity to do it now.
• Make your seasonal item displays large, well-marked and interesting. Maximize on customers' immediate needs, such as having allergy relief products during allergy season, flu and cold relief products during flu season and sun-protection lotions during summer. Pair up items that naturally go together such as suntan lotion, sunglasses and caps or hats. Put some tissue in with the aspirin and cough formulas. Add some oral thermometers and maybe even some packets of instant chicken soup! It's important that these displays be rearranged often.
• Consider creating one display area with “newly arrived” items that your customers can come back to during each visit to see what's been added since their last visit.

Your pharmacy shelving is the backbone of your store with everything else built around it. Go for quality fixtures and your customers will know you care about quality. Good-looking displays promote increased sales, which remains the ultimate goal.