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Merchandising is not just decorating; it’s a strategy to grow sales.

One thing I have learned over the years about selling products and setting up stores is that we who sell must be considerate and strategic about what we do, whom we want to shop in our stores and how we want it to happen. All success happens when we take the assets and liabilities, evaluate them and determine what we can do to be more relevant to customer needs.

Employing strategy is not just aligning yourself with a top-selling brand or a high margin; it’s having the right products at the right scale in the right place at the right time. The best strategy is to represent products customers expect you to have and have them as complete as you can in the right location, so customers find them. Play up brands and products that offer solutions to high needs. I find that tools, tie downs and bungees are high need products but tend to be scattered in multiple locations and poorly displayed. This results in lower turns when they should be higher turns, since these items are usable by a wide audience.

There are brands that include essential products and bling products at the same time. By creating good displays in a good location, to scale, you will find a major boost in turns on grips, handlebars, sprockets and more when they are displayed to attract and not just filed on a wall or floor display mixed with other brands. Be deliberate with your display strategy, and customer engagement will triple.

End caps are places to make a showing of brands, categories of goods or new hot items. Make sure your end caps are similar product groups or brand sections going down the aisle. Use graphics and POP support to tie your product display together.

Guideline to strong merchandising:

1. What kind of spaces are you working with?
2. How much space is available?
3. Is the space a wall or floor display?
4. What is relevant product for the current season?
5. Is the product or brand related to other merchandise nearby?
6. Do you have enough products to fill the space?
7. Do you have signs, graphics or any merchandising support to make your display complete?
8. How long will you run the display before the goods need to be changed to a new display?

Well set displays and effective merchandising will always result in immediate, strong sales of the goods. The strategy is putting essential products in a place that is easy to access, easy to see and easy to purchase.

Here is an example of what to avoid in merchandising.

The image above is a typical tool assortment presentation.It’s specific tools, but it’s random, hard to shop and difficult to read for customers.It would be best to separate the tool brands and then reset the tools. First, separate by brand and then by type to make it easier to be shopped. Avoid the negative spaces and make sure products flow. Strive to have neat, clean and easy to see vertical row merchandising. Finally, make sure your displays are not random and chaotic.

Organized tools, with brand Identification give a more attractive display and more customer engagement.

Displays guide goal:

• —Easy to understand
• —Easy to shop
• —Easy to locate and understand products
• —Branded, if at all possible

Jennifer Robison’s career began in 1987 when she served as a service writer/parts sales for a high-end import auto dealer before becoming one of the first generation of Harley-Davidson Motorclothes managers at a Northwest dealership (1991-2000). From 2002 on, Jennifer has been with Tucker Rocky Distributing. Jennifer has educated the Tucker Rocky sales force and dealers about the powersports apparel business and powersports retailing. Jennifer’s expertise is in powersports retailing, merchandising and display, promotions and in-store marketing. She has lectured and written about powersports retailing and continues to perform dealer educational workshops and seminars across the United States.

Contact: jrobison@tuckerrocky.com
Website: www.tuckerrocky.com