In today’s ‘Shop of the Future’ do you spread Visual Merchandising more thinly or Indulge in its Richness?

Tim Radley

Visual Merchandising, like any function within a retail business is having to adapt in response to the paradigm shifts that are occurring in the industry, from digital rich-media, to re-purposed high streets.

But it cannot adapt and respond in isolation. This is not a matter of improving visual display itself. It must integrate.

A good place to begin is the physical shop. The bastion of visual merchandising.

The role of the physical shop is no longer just about selling product. Commercial retailers are using space and resources to create ‘retail hubs.’

The ‘Shopper Paradise’ will still be the priority for most shops, more inspirational and theatrical than ever. But it will be a smaller part of smaller shops. Less product, less options/sqm of less sqm.

The ‘Community Hub’ is growing in importance with more space set-aside to engage customers and build loyalty.

The ’Collection Crossroads’ is growing to serve the omni-channel customer. Stockrooms of unsold products replaced by paid for purchases.

This new shop has less opportunity to work with product display. But it does have exciting opportunities, because product enthusiastic visual merchandisers, are also enthusiasts of customers, of talking & demonstrating to customers the benefits & the beauty of products.

Visual merchandisers are product people, but they are also people people. You could not wish to find a more gregarious group of individuals.

Interactive workshops and customer activities, lessons in how to dress, how to coordinate, how to ‘wear your wardrobe’, teaching how to up-cycle to create new products from old. These are all well suited to visual merchandisers.

Add to this the role of spontaneous personal stylists, in the physical & digital space, the opportunity to take their skills out of the shop as brand ambassadors to work with schools, colleges, recyclers.

Would visual merchandisers be re-energised by the opportunity to interact not only with mannequins, but also with real flesh & blood and the personalities behind them?

The alternative could well be chains of shops, each with less product, each with less justification for dedicated visual merchandisers. The answer, to spread their VM resources across more stores. More hours on the road and less on the shopfloor, more remote guidance than hands-on inspiration.

Personally, visual merchandisers are worth their weight in gold, but commercial businesses will think more pragmatically.

So, the questions remains …

As visual merchandisers, would you prefer to be spread more cost-effectively across more stores? Or would you like to be embraced as a rich resource, that can bring shops, customers, and communities alive, and satisfy the new role of physical shops, and the boardrooms and managers that fund them?