Before we go much further, let’s give a second thought to something you may have been doing without giving it a second thought: what is visual merchandising? The NRF, or National Retail Federation, defines visual merchandising as “space plans, planograms and floor sets [designed] to positively improve item sales and/or customer experience.” However, they also acknowledge that the landscape of retail is changing. So what does that mean for your visual merchandising?
In brief, here are some steps you can take to improve your visual merchandising.
So how can you benefit from better visual merchandising? Vary your displays, giving them themes that coincide with the seasons or with your sales goals. But don’t let displays stagnate. Change your visuals, your floor plan, and your planograms so that even your most dedicated repeat customers will always have something new to discover. Use color, texture, and even sound as part of your strategy and the public will quickly catch on to your brand and your values. Perhaps most importantly, don’t just throw a pile of merchandise onto a table or gondola. Curate! Your retail shelving and custom displays create a sense of experience over product, and that can be a decisive edge in today’s fiercely competitive retail environment.
Every business has a story to tell, but not all of them tell it equally well. You can’t simply rely on one element — your product, or your passion — to carry the narrative. Even if your visual merchandising works on a subconscious level, it’s certainly no less important for that. The shelving design solutions offered by Shelving Design Systems can be a valuable narrative device in telling your retail “story,” so contact us for a shelving design consultation that pulls all the strands of your retail business together into a narrative that sells.