What is Visual Merchandising?
Whenever you break out to shop something, what is the foremost thing that tempts you into purchasing it? The manner it is presented in the display window? Visual merchandising is a scheme to make merchandise more appealing to the customers by expressing it in the best possible manner.
Visual merchandise is a significant component of creating image involving everything that customer sees in approaching the store and after entering it, including the exterior of store, store sings, Display, lightings, interior decor and the ambiance created. Basically, it involves, presentation of:
Selling areas: where merchandise is displayed and customers interact with sales personnel. (75-80% of the total space)
Floor Plan: A drawing showing the arrangement of physical space, such as indicating the positioning of merchandise groups and customer services for a retail store.
Grid Layout: A retail floor plan that has one of our primary (main) aisles running through the store, with secondary (smaller) aisles intersecting with them at right angles.
Maze Layout: A free-flowing retail floor plan arrangement with informal balance.
Fixtures: Shelves, tables, rods, counters, stands, easels, forms, and platforms on which merchandise is stocked and displayed for sale.
Merchandise presentation includes the ways that goods are hung, set on shelves, or otherwise made available for sale in retail shops.
Shoulder-out presentation: The way most garments hang in home closets with only one side showing from shoulder to rump.
Face-forward presentation (face-out presentation): Hanging of clothing with the front fully facing the viewer. This should always be done at entrances and aisles.
Displays: individual and notable physical presentation of merchandise.
Displays are intended to:
Stimulate product interest
Provide information
Suggest merchandise coordination
Generate traffic flow
Remind customers of planned purchases
Create additional sales of impulse items
Enhance the store’s visual image
Props
Objects added that support the theme of the display.
Functional Props: used to physically hold the merchandise. (Mannequins, stands, panels, screens, etc.)
Decorative Props: used to establish a mode or an attractive mount for the merchandise being featured (ex: mirrors, flowers, seashells, surfboards, etc.)
Structural Props: used to support functional and decorative props and change the physical makeup of displays. (Boxes, rods, stands, stairways, etc.)
