Visual Display Tips

Creating displays can help you to nurture your crafty side. The most effective displays always have a theme and seem inspired. Inspiring displays inspire customers to feel as passionately as you about the merchandise that you’re selling. Boutiques are famous for creating memorable displays that keep customers curious about what you’ll do next. Whether you run a boutique or larger retail store, you can use these tips to make your displays more interesting and effective.

1) Do some research before you begin. Surf the web, go window shopping, and look at magazines to get your creative juices flowing. You can get ideas that help you to decide on a theme or a focus for your display. Consider the merchandise, of course, but also think about color to set the mood, the season, the promotion, or the theme of your store. Once you get an idea, the rest will quickly come together.

2) Consider running your ideas past your employees. Give them a theme and ask them for their ideas. Sometimes your employees are your best asset because they see what grabs customers’ attention every day, out on the floor. Hold a contest to inspire your staff to be more involved in the success of the store. You may be surprised at how creative some of your employees may be.

3) Once you have your idea, decide on a budget. Remember that less is often more and you don’t necessarily have to spend a fortune on a display. You may want to buy a few key pieces for the display. Try to buy things that can be reused in the future so that you can get the most bang for your buck. Tables or racks that fold, props that inflate, and decorations that lay flat are easiest to store for future use. Mannequins can be customized to fit a lot of different types of displays and can stay in good shape for many years. Investing in this proven seller is never a bad move.

4) When setting up your display, keep balance and focus in mind. Start by setting up your focal point. Too many focal points will not draw attention like a central focus will. The focus doesn’t have to be in the center of the display. Good visuals are hardly ever perfectly centered. They’re often more interesting if they’re not. A customer may pass twenty window displays with centered mannequins and hardly notice them, and then the one that tells a story and isn’t perfectly centered will be the one to turn their head.

5) Use lighting, signage, whatever you need to draw attention to your focal point. You can even use more mannequins to direct attention to the focal point. Have them looking at the main character or feature in your display.

6) Make room for interesting visual displays throughout your store or boutique. Use slatwall panels and slatwall accessories to free up space on the sales floor. You can use the slatwall itself to create interesting slatwall displays. Using vertical space can help you to better manage your merchandise so that your displays remain the center of attention.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the Vice President of S & L Store Fixtures, a leading online resource for retail displays, including mannequins, dress mannequin forms, female mannequins, slatwall and slatwall panels. For more information, please visit http://www.slstoredisplays.com.

Keeping Up with Retail Appearances

Like it or not, customers constantly judge you based on your appearance. How you dress, your hair, make-up, your employees attention to service, that piece of trash on the floor, and the messy table of products that ten anxious shoppers just rummaged through. All of these things and more can help a person form an opinion about you, your store, and your products in a matter of seconds. Keeping up the appearance that you want to present can be challenging in the hectic holiday season.

Make sure that you have the basic foundation of order under your belt. Using retail displays that are designed well is a good place to start. Circular racks can easily get crowded and look a mess even if everything there is in order. Forward facing displays are not only more effective, they are easier to keep straight and show the customer what you have to offer before they touch a thing.

Using display wall units, like gridwall and slatwall, will really help you to keep the store straight. Hanging items up high means that customers can see the products way before they even enter the store. They are displayed facing outward and spotlights can showcase something even if it is high overhead. Customers will need assistance to look at items that are up high, so this keeps them from rummaging through stacks that constantly need to be refolded and fixed.

Another benefit to having things hung up high is that an associate can always be hovering in that area to help customers. This way, people can ask questions, get immediate help, and the employee can keep track of how many items are going into and coming out of the dressing room. If people can’t hide behind crowded racks, then it is much harder to shoplift. This is especially true if they know that the employee is aware of exactly what they are holding.

Another benefit to having things displayed on gridwall or slat wall is that it is so easy to display clothing on mannequin forms. These plastic or acrylic shells are torso forms that hang from the bar in front of your inventory. They take up no floor space, but allow you to showcase certain outfits and accessories almost as well as a full size mannequin. Customers can simply scan the wall and figure out which outfits would suit their needs before they ever decide to go into the dressing room.

Gridwall and slatwall satisfy a lot of your needs and keep your retail store looking great throughout the holiday season. Your displays will sell more clothing and accessories, you can cut down on shoplifting, and the time that employees spend straightening racks. Keep your store in order this holiday season and you will rake in the benefits.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the Vice President of S & L Store Fixtures, a leading online resource for retail displays, including mannequins, dress mannequin forms, female mannequins, gridwall and slatwall store fixtures. For more information, please visit http://www.slstoredisplays.com.

How to Keep up with Merchandising During the Holidays

The holiday season is an exciting time in retail. But, it can also be a challenging time for retailers. The store can really get cluttered with all of the extra holiday inventory. Keeping up with organization, customer demands, inventory, and displays can make it hard to stay in the holiday spirit. Use these tips to simplify and streamline the process.

1. Give employees an updated inventory list every day. If racks start to run low, they can quickly reference if there are more products in storage or not. No more wasted time rummaging through boxes to figure out if they can find another size for a customer.

2. Prepare your inventory for presentation before you need it. You don’t need to be pulling wrinkled garments out of boxes and displaying them before they are ready. Keep a steamer or two in your back room. Fill the room with rolling garment racks and hang everything that comes in as soon as you get it. Get it steamed and ready to go out.

3. Keep a list of your hottest products next to the register. Have the cashier check off or make a mark when one of the hot items sells. Have them alert another employee when a certain item or size of an item gets up to a good number. The other employees can quickly restock sizes before you lose a sale.

4. Have employees greet customers and let them know that you have plenty of inventory in the back if they can’t find something. This will keep them from ignoring racks or stacks that are looking low.

5. Get your employees to follow a system of maintenance. Every time they help a customer, they should straighten racks and displays on their way to the next customer. Just make sure that they drop everything if a customer needs help. Also make sure that they know it is rude to straighten things when a customer is trying to look at them or immediate after they messed things up. Always be courteous and eager to assist.

6. Make sure that your items are clearly visible to customers. Showcase each item in a way the keeps customers from rummaging through stacks. Slatwall and gridwall displays are perfect for this. You can utilize wall space by hanging items on outward facing racks. Hanging mannequin forms are perfect for showing off your best outfits. Just hang them on the end of the rack and customers can easily see them, even from outside the store. If they already know what something looks like on, then they are less likely to need to rummage through the rack.

By manipulating the displays on your slatwall or grid wall, you can keep them looking full. If you run out of something, simply move the hanging bars or racks around a little to fill up the space. Keep everything organized and your holiday season can be a productive and exciting one!

About the Author: Ron Maier is the Vice President of S & L Store Fixtures, a leading online resource for retail displays, including mannequins, dress mannequin forms, female mannequins, slatwall and gridwall store fixtures. For more information, please visit http://www.slstoredisplays.com.

Creating Effective Visual Displays

Creating attractive displays can get cumbersome if you use the same ideas over and over again. No matter how wonderful a display may be, if you use it too much, customers will lose interest, employees will not be excited, and your store will begin to look boring. Use these ideas to put life back into your retail displays. Get your store organized for optimal sales. Get ready for the holiday season and have your store functioning more efficiently than ever.

It’s not just how a display looks that is important. You could build an intricate model of the Eiffel tower with purses. It would be interesting, but wouldn’t necessarily sell any purses. The style of the display should match the style of the item that you are promoting. For example, distress washed jeans and vintage t-shirts could have a rock-n-roll style of display, loosely stacked on a table or worn by a mannequin wearing a hat and a head-set. That may not work so well for a designer suit, which is better showcased on a wooden hanger or more sophisticated mannequin.

If the clothing that you sell is casual, you can get really creative. But, you shouldn’t forget that it is important to maintain your image, build customer confidence, grab attention, and keep things organized. It’s a lot to think about, but not very hard to obtain.

Start with being organized and displaying things where customers can actually see them. Crowded, jumbled racks are just an inefficient, ineffective way to go. Utilizing a system, such as gridwall or a slatwall system, can keep things really organized and give your customers unmatched views of your merchandise. These are especially effective for maximizing small retail spaces that you see in malls and boutiques.

Hang enough items facing front that your displays really communicate your style. Alternate textures and styles, or use colors to create interesting patterns. You can really use your imagination, but be careful not to take attention away from the products that you are promoting. If your red clothing all forms a star in the middle of your gridwall, it will definitely grab attention! But did it lead all of your customers straight past your promotional display? Make sure that you position displays around big attention getters so that they will be seen.

Gridwalland slatwall displays are perhaps the most useful retail displays on the market. You can cheaply and easily mix it up as often as you’d like. You can move racks, bars, hooks and shelves around throughout the day to keep all of your displays looking fresh. This helps to build customer confidence because your racks don’t look empty. It helps you to keep up with business on days like Black Friday, and make it look effortless. Use your gridwall or slat wall displays to showcase your items this year.

About the Author: Ron Maier is the Vice President of S & L Store Fixtures, a leading online resource for retail displays, including mannequins, dress mannequin forms, female mannequins, gridwall and slatwall store fixtures. For more information, please visit http://www.slstoredisplays.com.