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Keep ‘em coming back for more

By Marthy Barmejo | April 18, 2018

The most important objective of visual merchandising and overall retail businesses is to engage and inspire shoppers, to encourage them to buy more of the products than they intend to thereby increasing sales, margin and return on space.

The most important objective of visual merchandising and overall retail businesses is to engage and inspire shoppers, to encourage them to buy more of the products than they intend to thereby increasing sales, margin and return on space.

That engagement process of course starts even before they have set foot in your store. Creating a unique shopping experience in the stores and figuring out ways to keep customers coming back is no easy feat and I start first by identifying the strengths and weaknesses. If we look at this year’s S/S’18 store revamp as a case study, updating the stores’ appeal and revamping store layout and design - a major amount of inspiration comes from the fresh colour palette and themes that bring life to the store. Heading the VM team at Home Centre, I believe in constant change and my inspiration starts from the film that I watched, or the places that I travelled to or simply from streets’ light colour and some inspirational VM stories that retail giants like Bloomingdale’s or Crate & Barrel create.

The strength and range of creativity never ceases to amaze me.  Being in this field requires you to honestly abide by the quote that says “There's more to this than meets the eye” and “see the extraordinary in the ordinary”.  They say, “Creativity has a wild mind and a disciplined eye”. Portraying the brand at its best, we always focus on both convenience and proximity as consumers are always looking at ease and speed of browsing the store as well as the ability to spot merchandise that they are looking for. The role of good VM is take these as cues and make “visibility” the king of your job. Pick up any product – we make sure of making it alluring by creating a story around it. We need to come up with constant newer ideas, which are often supported by detailed studying of the current trends around.

Doing everything with perfection and focusing on efficiency is important to make sure that the time spent by the customer in the store is worthwhile. Coming back to the SS ’18 VM representations, the overall store ambience underwent a process of change this season - from coming up with unique inspiration to implementing the ideas in reality. Creativity is experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes and most importantly having fun.  Change is expected to create a feel of instant gratification amongst the customers so that they find their purchases valuable. This season breaks all monotony with the introduction of the fresh colour palettes uniformly throughout the store. The combination runs from being subtle as teal and beige to bold as red and off-white and also soothing as green and white. The bedroom VM representation has been through a major makeover as we have moved from simple vinyl backdrop to  interesting 3D patterned backdrop. The planograms are all created keeping the latest trends in mind and for the customers to experience the products in the best way possible. The focal points, windows and planograms are done as discovery of solutions to the problems faced in the previous season’s layouts.

Every corner might have a planogram to be followed but we have always ensured that the personal touch makes it complete. The beautification of an area is a result of a lot of trial and error. The whole process is a give and take process where everyone inspires everyone, of course under the guidance of me as their mentor. Some of the footsteps I ardently follow in order to create impactful VM are understanding the theme, the importance of color, balance and functionality and welcoming individual wit and creativity.  We merge all of that while believing the dictum, “You will never learn until you make mistakes”.

We always focus on both convenience and proximity as consumers are always looking at ease and speed of browsing the store as well as the ability to spot merchandise that they are looking for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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