Tips For Healthy Merchandising: A Two Part Series For Retail Store Owners

Office World News, May/Jun 2004 by Larson, Don

A retail store needs a location, products to sell and someone to buy the products to survive. But just surviving is not usually the goal of any storeowner. The goal is to have a healthy and profitable store that continues to grow year after year. To accomplish this, the retail market also has its own "food groups," which are necessary if it wants to be healthy and grow. These can be broken into customer service; merchandising; product and category mix; inventory control; and also signage. In the last article we covered lighting, color and facing as they applied to merchandising. This issue, we'll continue discussing merchandising with a detailed analysis of shelving, labels and product placement.

Merchandising Tip 4: Sensible Shelving

Shelves should go from wider on the bottom to progressively smaller as you work your way up the gondola or wall unit. In the office products industry, most products carried, with a few exceptions, will show well on shelf units with a 16- inch base deck. We usually recommend using two sizes of shelves (15-inch on the bottom and 13-inch above) to keep the displays as simple as possible. In a few instances, it's nice to have a few 10- inch shelves for very small items such as clips and fasteners. Here's a tip to make your life easier: when removing shelves, work from the top to the bottom and, when replacing them, go from the bottom to the top.

Every time you put up a shelf or redo a section of the store, put all the shelves up FIRST and leave them EMPTY. Step back from the shelves, looking at each and imagining the items you will be putting in that space. Can you EASILY see every shelf? Does one shelf block the other? Are they so close together you can't see half the merchandise?

When setting up a section of 'pegged' merchandise again work from the bottom up. After placing a peg, hang one of the intended display item on the peg until the whole section is completed. Once it's all spaced out and you are assured that everything fits the way you want it, then, and only then, fill up every hook. This will cut your merchandising time in half and save you many hours of putting up, moving over, and taking down; not to mention having everything fall off the hook above when trying to 'squeeze' another hook under it. And remember, you do not sell peg holes; so have as few as possible showing.

Merchandising Tip 5: Label, Label, Label

Each and every single item in a store should have a permanent home, and nothing should go into a space except what it is labeled for...PERIOD!! Following this rule will allow you to increase revenues by 10- 15 percent without doing anything other than maintaining the correct products in the correct space with the correct amount. These labels should contain, at the least, product number, product description and price. This is the basic information needed to assist you in the efficient running of your store. Labels can also include UPC number, barcodes, quantity of product to be displayed, list price, bin location, and vendor source.

Remember that laser printer labels have permanent adhesive and will mar and damage your shelves. Keep the shelf channels clean, removing all residue from old labels. There are products on the market that will remove even the most stubborn of labels.

There are many different sources for shelf labels and software to support the products. Most of the POS/MIS companies also provide some type of 'Label Program' to interface with its particular system to help you create labels and maintain a good shelf appearance.

Merchandising Tip 6: Product Placement

Put the most popular products you carry in their face! Forget that old 'wives- tale' that tells retailers to put the most popular products on the bottom shelf "so it will make the customer look for the item and therefore will be exposed to more items." That doesn't work and only serves to frustrate your customers. The idea of having your customer "hunt" for a product is shear craziness! You want to make it as easy as possible tor customers Io shop in your store.

File folders, copy paper, staples and paper clips should be in the most accessible location on the fixture with related products within easy reach. These "related categories or products" tie products into one another and are often purchased together. For example, loose-leaf paper and indexes should be adjacent to the binders or at least in the same aisle. Just as the add- rolls could be right next to the calculators or rubber stamps and pads near the 'copy center' or the area where you write up rubber stamp orders. Also remember to put that SPECIAL PRICE in their face as well - customers will look for those specials or "Every Day Low Price" signs.

Implementing A Plan

We recommend that you start by taking very small baby steps. Take just a single 'four-foot' section at a time, look at it, plan out what it should look like and make it perfect. Every item should have its sales history checked to make sure it is currently available from the wholesaler and should be labeled correctly before moving on to the next section.