The backing card supplied to promote the royal tour editions of AWW and OK! is big and covers the magazine behind it. This is okay if it’s a Bauer title as they are damaging themselves but if it’s a competitor product behind it’s unfair.
We have removed the backing cards as I don’t think they do anything to boost sales and, as noted, they detract from other product.
Now this is a different way to display asparagus and spring onions – standing up on a shelf. They also had broccoli and other vegetables on vertical shelves – very smart and enticing for the shopper.
This is excellent and inspiring visual merchandising – it shows what can be done even with something you thought you might not be able to display.
The workshops I have been lucky to be part of here in the US this week underscore the importance of keeping the retail offer fresh. This does not mean keeping displays tidy, no, it means creating fresh displays through a season pitching new opportunities.
In all major seasons here retailers in channels similar to newsagency businesses are encouraged to change their offer every couple of weeks in a reasonably major way.
In my experience this is rare in Australia. So imagine how thrilled I was to receive a photo showing a significantly refreshed easter offer in one of my stores. Regulars or semi regulars will see this as fresh and that will help drive sales.
The Disney Princess brand topped the 2012 licencing franchise list as the brand generating the most revenue – sales in excess of $1B – according to industry newsletter The Licencing Letter. In 2013 it continued to play a vital role in the financial success of the Disney corporation.
This matters to newsagents because we have access to a range of Disney Princess product. We can draw together products from multiple suppliers and across multiple categories and tell retail stories that pitch our businesses as culturally relevant and appealing to an important age-group and those who shop for them.
Sourcing mega-brand products from multiple suppliers creating a compelling in-store pitch is another way we can attract new shoppers to our businesses and get existing suppers spending more.
Now if you are reading this and saying all your customers are old, ask yourself: do they not buy for grandkids or nieces or nephews?
The photo shows part of the Disney Princess range in my newsagency. It’s part of a newsXpress strategy developed with several suppliers.
Suppliers themselves don’t get together to pitch a licenced brand story, we need to source these opportunities for ourselves or through our newsagency marketing group.
There are many opportunities like Disney Princess around which we can grow a brighter future.
We moved the floor display unit promoting the Pacific Magazines win a car promotion to partially block one of the entrances to the business Thursday. It’s worked a treat – delivering more sales of the promoted titles. That’s Life and Who have especially benefited. I think the incremental sales have been as a result of the new placement of the unit and the simple marketing message. Watching customers tells us its working at attracting traffic from the mall in front of the business.
I like this display unit as it enables us to promote magazines on the lease line without giving up too much space to the low margin category. In addition to promoting these Pacific Magazines titles, it unit acts as a sign-post proclaiming: magazines here.
The window display promoting Valentine’s Day in Kikki.K stores is creative and inspiring, perfectly targeting the Kikki.K shopper. notice how it’s not about price? Their focus is on connecting with people looking at the window, triggering emotions and offering inspirations. This is good visual merchandising.
I love this stand-alone display promoting water that I saw at Melbourne airport. Click on the image as see the detail as it’s the detail that makes the display special. See the windmill at the top of the display, on tip of the tank. In a busy retail space, it’s this detail that gets the display noticed.
Inspiring visual merchandising.
We setup this wall on Saturday to promote more of the inspirational / positive / happy / good feeling products we have in-store.
This range of signs, part of a broader range of inspirational products we have deliberately sourced, had been placed with gifts on the shop floor and they were getting missed, lost in the colour of other products.
Putting the inspirational signs on the wall with black A2 card as backing helps them stand out and be noticed – and that is key for a products like this where the words and design do the selling as they touch the heart of the shopper.
Our placement with the black backing also helps draw people deeper into the shop as the black backing makes this wall stand out if people glance around the business.
We have a deep discount store a few doors away from us with products similar to these – not exactly the same and certainly not of the same quality – but they are chasing the same customer. It is a thoughtful display like this that separates us from the deep discount competitor. While we will not attract someone only buying on price, we will drive impulse purchases from people shopping from their heart.
Products like this, products purchased to express a feeling or emotion for personal use or for giving as a gift are vitally important in newsagencies. Greeting card customers especially will purchase them.
Click on the image for a larger version.
A retail store near a holiday destination uses a skateboard as a prop for displaying shoes. this is excellent visual merchandising. The skateboard speaks to their target shopper better than if the shoes were placed on a traditional shelf.
Sometimes the simplest ideas work best. The test of any display is the revenue it generates.
I made the mistake of installing fixtures like you can see in this photo from a Barnes and Noble store in New York. What they have is better, easier to shop. The only difference is that they have a single wall with space in front. Mine is in an aisle with not enough space.
The single wall of magazines at this Barnes and Noble store is terrific – easy to shop and a bold statement for their range. It’s something that would work well in a newsagency instead of the traditional magazine valley.
We’ve received terrific feedback from shoppers this Christmas for promotions offering a range of common-themed hospitality related products – like this Christmas range with bags, mugs, placemats, serving platters and the like.
We keep common-themed products together so the complete story can be told. This drives sales. While I understand this is basic retail management, I mention it as there are many newsagents new to retail.
we do the same with brands. For example, we have all Peppa Pig product together: plush, stationery, books and magazines. Online does this well and we need to get better at it.
We’re seeing excellent year on year sales of plush this Christmas season. While some sales have been to customers visiting to purchase cards or gifts, others have been to customers who know us as a plush destination. This is thrilling.
Achieving $750 and more in a day in plush sales is wonderful. Achieving it day in day out in the run down to Christmas is excellent. We could have achieved more had we not sold out of some lines – but that’s a good problem to have this close to Christmas.
We have created the plush results for ourselves as part of our business plan from mid 2012. Not only the sales ahead of plan, the net new traffic generated by the category is ahead of plan. It’s terrific seeing the business plan deliver these results.
The success with plush is a reason I prefer to focus on being a retailer in my businesses as opposed to being an agent. People are coming to us because of decisions we have made and actions we have taken. They are coming to us for us and not for a product or service over which we have little or no control as to where they get it, how much we make from it and or how much someone else promotes it.
The more of my business over which I have control the better for the future of my business.
Footnote: the photo reflects another reason for success with this category – our team creates displays that attract shoppers from within the shop. This line of colourful bears toward the back of the shop draws people further into the business. We’re always thinking beyond front of store displays. Attention to visual merchandising and product placement mid way through and at the rear of the store are just as important as the front window.
I love this display of socks I saw in David Jones in Sydney this week. It was away from the sock department, next to an escalator. It was placed to grab attention of those leaving the floor heading down a level and probably to the exit door. The strategy is to try and grab an extra sale to someone who’s done shopping and is leaving.
I love this idea and think newsagents can do the same with exiting customers. I often ask newsagents who are concerned about inefficient lottery and newspaper customers what they place as an exit offer. I touched on it is my Sunday newsagency marketing tip last weekend.
The other thing to love about the sock display is that the display itself is a terrific Christmas decoration for the store. There are products we could display where they become a decoration for us.
This is the current window display at the Kikki K store in the Qantas terminal at Sydney airport. I love it, especially how they have framed the window and so boldly connected it with Christmas and made the products the hero. This framing draws your attention. Plenty of people stopped to have a look when I was there this week.
Newsagents with glass windows could do something like this, framing the window to focus more attention on what’s being promoted.
I like the window display I saw at a Kikki K store last week. Bright colours – blocked. A nice clean display – neat. Very appealing – eye catching.
This display is a good example of less is more.
Newsagents with window displays could do this with newsagency products given the colours of some products we sell.
I was in a newsagency earlier this week and saw this excellent display incorporating maps and two travel related magazines. This is excellent promotion of products from two different categories – showing off to shoppers complimentary product categories carried in-store. I love the hero placement of the magazines.
This display is excellent visual merchandising that you would only see in newsagency. Well done Renee!
I love the chocolate coffins I saw in the window of one chocolate show in downtown Auckland earlier this week. Their Halloween display was excellent. It was made up of a series of small displays like this chocolate coffin display. Talking to a team member in the shop they have become known for their themed displays. People come to look at them. The team members get to make suggestions.
This is an excellent example of making an independent and small retail business a destination. Outside of these window displays this is an average chocolate shop – not meaning to put them down. Their window displays separate them and make them a shop to visit, to see what they are up to.
They are generating destination traffic, the most valuable form of traffic a retailer can have.
Click on the image for a bigger version.
The coffin arrived and is now in place as the centrepiece of our Halloween 2013 display. Sadly, like all Halloween centrepieces, it will probably sell early.
We’re making the most of the opportunity and showing others in the centre how to do Halloween – we;re expecting their displays this year to be like last, very vanilla (boring).
Sales continue to be excellent – up on 2012.
Halloween sales in the first day and a half we have the stock up have been excellent making us wonder if we have enough stock for the season of fun!
We have Halloween products on the lease line. This placement is bringing new traffic in for us. These shoppers buying on impulse get a discount voucher and are encouraged by this to buy more. Halloween is a perfect season for leveraging discount vouchers to drive a more valuable per-visit spend.
Check out the terrific display created yesterday on the lease line facing into the shopping mall by one of the guys on our team.
While created to promote the licenced – Batman, Spiderman & Superman – money-boxes, I love that the display has been built including greeting cards, magazines and plush covering the same licences. Very smart.
I love the use of coloured paper to visually support the products on show.
This is an excellent display in the ideal location and at the best possible time (school holidays) for this product. The display is good example of how we can attract new traffic to our newsagencies.
If you click on the image you’ll see a bigger version of the photo.
These Jelly Rings sell better at the counter if one in the display unit is turned on. One flashing attracts attention and attention = sales.
From Independence Studios, the Jelly Rings are part of a range of counter and candy-lane products we embrace. While not for everyone, they work for us as we are surrounded by retailers with discounted candy.
We introduced the Melissa and Doug educational classic toy range to one of my newsagencies last week and while the display oin the lease line facing into the mall looked good, I felt it could look better. Here are before and after photos. Click on them for bigger size.
Here is the display as it looked yesterday when I saw it for the first time. The product was well laid out and there was good use of the Melissa and Doug logo. Seeing it though I felt it lacked what I’d call ownership of the space for the brand.
Here is the display after we had made one change, the introduction of a black cloth backdrop covering the beanie Kids fixture behind the melissa and Doug product. This simple change makes a huge difference. Now the Melissa and Doug products own the space.
Visual merchandising is all about making the product the hero, making it stand out to shoppers in your store and walking past your store. While the only test that matters is if the product sells, it will sell if it is displayed in to sell.
Since I am not in the newsagency full time it is easy to walk in and notice things people who are there all the time may miss. I appreciate their patience and cheerfulness in letting me do this and then leave while they change things.
The first display was not bad at all but I knew it could be better. Hence the small change.
sales of melissa and Doug product are excellent. We’ve reordered.
