Fall in love with your visual merchandising

Ultimately, success in retail can rely on visual merchandising. If items aren’t made to look appealing, passers-by won’t come instore, let alone make a purchase. These top tips will help you to rethink your store design, helping you, and your customers fall in love with your visual merchandising.

Contributor: Holly Worthington Group products Inspire your customers by grouping products together. This can be done by style, purpose, price, or colour. Draw customers in by creating eye-catching displays, clearly linking relevant products. An example of this would be to have mannequins wearing summer clothes, also displaying sunglasses, a beach bag and a sun hat. A display with a message or theme, such as summer, is much more effective with the use of product grouping.

Give customers a sign Use signage to inform and excite customers. Tell them about promotions and new ranges in shop windows. Give signage instore to various sections, changing rooms and checkouts. Great signage is the silent salesperson; enticing and directing customers as they browse. It can also stop lost revenue through frustrated customers leaving your store when they can’t find what they came in for.

Keep it exciting Regularly rotate displays, showcasing new stock and ranges to remain current. If your window display is identical every day for 6 months, people who pass by regularly are unlikely to suddenly be tempted to come instore. You also run the risk of being seen as outdated, for example, if you have a Christmas

“If items aren’t made to look appealing, passers-by won’t come instore, let alone make a purchase.”

display after December, or have a window display with summer clothing when the weather turns cold. Tap into trends, seasons, promotions and holidays to reinvigorate your visual merchandising.

Tap into the senses Sight – Make your store visually appealing. Make sure it’s well enough lit for products to be clearly visible, and use lighting techniques to emphasise specific displays. Hearing – Make customers’ visits enjoyable with music suited to your target market and desired atmosphere. This can keep people instore longer and enhance their experience. Touch – One of the main benefits of retail instore is that customers can feel products and see them in person. Place items in locations which are easy to reach, letting customers experience the textures where possible. Smell – The scent of a store can enhance enjoyment, and also create a lasting memory. Most of us will remember Lush for its sweet scent or bath bombs, which makes its way throughout shopping centres and high streets around the country. Don’t go too daring, but remember that a memorable and enjoyable scent can entice potential customers instore. Taste – If you stock products that are edible, give samples. Simple things like this can encourage purchases, with a ‘try before you buy’ approach proving very popular.

Make it Instagrammable Instagram has become a fantastic form of marketing when utilised correctly. Make your displays attractive and picture-worthy, or include hashtags, increasing the likelihood of people sharing pictures of your store with their followers. Not only is this a free form of marketing, it will attract potential customers instore and help you to reach a new, larger audience with attractive displays.

HOW TO OVERCOME THIS RETAIL DISASTER

Covid-19 has left a major mark on retailer and landlords. Whilst e-commerce is propping up retailers, it is not a sustainable long-term solution. Physical retail is still the best way for brands and customers to connect, especially in fashion and apparel.

At Northbanks we’ve created exciting retail environments for global clients such as Ralph Lauren, Lego, Vivienne Westwood, Converse and Alfred Dunhill to name a few. With over 25 years of experience, we know exactly how to create retail environments that best reflect an ever-changing society. Retail real estate has unfortunately seen more and more vacancies due to shops closing during this challenging time. Northbanks had already been looking for solutions as we foresaw this as a problem even before the pandemic, and it will sadly continue to be more acute in the following months, if not years. Landlords (who we so readily complain about with their high rents) and commercial property investors, are also in trouble and have portfolios of empty properties, business rates and council liabilities.

Physical retail is not dying. In fact, many of our clients and other global future-forward brands such as Nike and Burberry are investing heavily in in-store innovations. A shop is the ideal environment to communicate the brand or retailers’ personality and unique authentic story that people now crave. It is a curated insight into the ethos of the brand. This is hard to achieve in a crowded digital world. With our expertise, we know that a store with its soft selling approach to product merchandising, window displays, life style decoration, characteristic shop design and assisted shopping with fellow humans we can relate to, are indispensable ingredients to a successful brand.

We have all witnessed retailers with stores having to cut back, limiting their physical footprint. However, online sales are not guaranteed to fill that gap. Digitalfirst retailers are perhaps in the best position but many of them know that a physical presence, which is hard to do online, is vital in connecting with their brand followers. But, committing to a long-term lease is much less viable now.

We see in the ‘new normal’ that brands may be less likely to take out a typical five-year lease, and shorter temporary leases might be beneficial all round, making pop-up stores more appealing. Cost effective pop-ups can appear anywhere - and go wherever your customers are! Retail space, train stations, piazzas…the ability to be agile and ‘pop-up’ in different locations or even different cities is a really exciting solution for reaching a wider customer base.

In February 80-95% of purchases were still made offline, with that in mind both landlords and retailers are in need of flexible solutions. Short term rentals fill empty real estate and as such there is a huge opportunity to take advantage of the reduction of business rates until March 31st 2021. Northbanks is working alongside our clients to take full advantage of this opportunity, allowing brands to test new markets and product launches, personalise buyer experiences and ultimately sell more.

Temporary retail creates physical spaces that deliver a cohesive brand message that ties into marketing campaigns. A pop-up builds brand awareness, attracts positive PR and puts your brand in front of new shoppers. With that in mind, a real focus for Northbanks is creating pop-ups which provide landlords and retailers with that necessary flexibility. We create pop-ups that maximise the buying opportunities to ensure the brand followers get the best experience.

Let’s find the best solution for your retail needs, whether you are a landlord, shop owner or brand wanting to immerse customers in your brand. Get in touch!

Give us a call on +44 (0) 207 993 8066 (we’re really nice!) Or email hello@northbanks.co.uk if you’re feeling shy!

Creating shopper experiences that better your brand