This 'n' Data

The Poll Position

Rate the five most successful display techniques you use at your store*

1. Vignette displays
2. Endcaps
3. Impulse/register displays
4. Display gardens
5. Theme displays
    

10 steps to successful merchandising*

1. Change your displays monthly; Display new arrivals first

• If you ordered merchandise that is meant to go together, always keep it together
• After the season, group old merchandise with new merchandise for a new look

2. Don’t choose to display prominently products the customer already needs

• Display other items that you are trying to push in a way that will entice customers to treat themselves and “just buy it”

3. Look for common traits that lend to “grouping”

• Display by product use (example: put all items related to raised bed gardening together)
• Display by color (strongest combinations to attract attention in retail are red, white and black)
• Try related or contrasting colors

4. Start with the display area closest to the front door; put new/most expensive in the spotlight

• Be sure to have several levels of height
• Have enough product in the display that the customer can pick up and touch without disturbing the entire display
• Don’t display “Do not touch!” signs; to the customer they equal “Do not buy!” (displays are meant to get messed up)

5. Find a totally unrelated item and put it in your display

• It works to grab the customer’s attention
• It’s not necessary to add one to every display, but it is a fun idea once in awhile

6. Light your display

• Adjust overhead lighting
• Light makes the merchandise “pop”

7. Add a few well-placed, well-worded signs

• Make sure they are short and easy to read
• Handwritten signs are ok, but can look rather juvenile

8. Move existing displays around in the store when new merchandise comes in

• Switch displays two weeks after their arrival
• Move them from front to middle to back to middle to front, etc.

9. Monitor your computer printouts and inventory levels weekly

• Always be prepared to reorder
• If you run out of stock, change the display to something that you have plenty of
• If you have a no-seller, try moving the display to a new location

10. Make sure all of your stock is priced

• No one wants to ask how much something costs

* Source: Iowa Retail Federation

Cha-Ching!

Borrowing a page from ‘A Field of Dreams,” Arkansas Garden Center, with two locations in Little Rock, has this motto: If you can dream it, we can build it.

Indeed, both locations are all a customer could want in a garden center—with a stellar landscape design service thrown in, to boot. The company offers complete services, from the design to the final planting of the garden area. And that goes for practically any landscape scene imaginable, at least any that pertain to gardens, walkways and retaining walls, garden rooms, outdoor kitchens, water gardens, statuary and fountains, landscaping trees/shrubs/plants, and accessories and furniture.

We’ve preached in recent times that “garden center plus” is the way of the future, and Arkansas Garden Center is providing an ideal model to emulate.

That, friends, is what “Cha-ching!” is all about.