RANGE REVIEW: POS & MERCHANDISING
AND INSPIRE A
IMPRESS
Efficient point of sale and merchandising is one of the easiest ways to give customers a convenient and stress- free experience in store. Kiran Grewal finds out how retailers should be utilising this skill to its full potential
s technology develops the
growth
and of
online retailing puts pressure on bricks-and-mortar
businesses, point of sale and merchandising has never been more paramount to guiding and enhancing a customer’s shopping experience in store.
Even though it might be difficult to visualise what you would need to do in your spaces to stand out from the crowd, DIY Week has compiled advice from industry figures to break through the areas that retailers may be struggling with. Benchmark Retail Services managing director, Mark Alexander says: “POS and merchandising are not just important for the retail sector, but absolutely vital. When you sell over 20,000 products and, in some cases 40,000 or more, detailed product knowledge becomes a challenge and good POS
24 DIY WEEK 12 APRIL 2019
material can help both consumers and store staff better appreciate the features and benefits of ranges and individual products.”
Although the initial focus might be on getting the customer through the door
to begin with, Mark
says it’s no good if the customer leaves without making a purchase: “Retailers are being challenged by falling high street sales and ever- increasing competition from low- cost online sources. We hear talk of ‘retail basics’, having stock in the right place, in the right quantity and the right time – sadly this is rarely the case and, when the hard work of getting a consumer into the stores has been done, seeing them leave without making a purchase is all the more a sad sight and one we see every single day.” We ask Mark if he has seen any
merchandising that has really created an impact, and at Benchmark he says “One of the best we’ve seen is Gorilla
Glues “Gorilla Island” – it’s massive, really imposing and shouts about the product and, when it’s installed, consumers just love it. We see them having photos taken with it! It’s nearly six-foot tall and we can see sales responding immediately. We have seen some very clever displays on such mundane ranges as cable reels, sited well – for example next to electric lawnmowers in the Spring -–wonderful for add-on sales. It’s the same for WD-40 units which we’ve seen well deployed.” DIY Week’s online poll asked its
readers which product categories were found to be the most challenging to merchandise; and garden, hardware and ironmongery came up in the top three. Of this, Mark says: “By necessity, hardware is a massive range and most of it quite small, fiddly, ideally purchased in small units but uneconomical to supply that way, labour intensive and easily turned to disarray through
frequent handling. The desire to offer a comprehensive range can work against retailers here. “Over proliferation of brands or
offer creates confusion and clouds the ability to help a consumer make an informed purchase. Individual draws, enabling customers to select what they really want in the quantity they need is a great solution, the segregation of products often help keep them easy to buy, but a merchandising approach of ‘little and often’ is needed, so you don’t let the display get disorganised, the recovery of which can run to many man-hours. “Peg product also works well
here; even short euro-pegs can carry enough stock to provide for most stock turn models and replenishment is easy, even better if a permanent product card with the EAN code is
left on the peg
permanently to aid when out of stock,” he advises.
www.diyweek.net
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