VISUAL MERCHANDISING

The personality of a person is judged by the way one dress himself. Similarly the ambience of the store is judged by the way it has been displayed to the customer. The visual merchandiser needs to make sure that his store is the best compared to the rest in terms of visuals created within the store. He needs to be very creative when it comes to display, understand products, the market trend, and fashion updates, colour themes, to create stories within a set of merchandise, and upgrade his visual displays from time to time. You tend to learn a lot in merchandising if you are associated with a store dealing in apparels.

During my stint at the BHS store in Jeddah I used to enjoy displaying the new arrivals of merchandise in the store and give a visual appeal to it. It’s during this period that I understood the concept of cool colours, warm colours and neutral colours when it comes to displaying apparels. Cool colours are all the shades of blue, green, purple, indigo, violet and warm colours are all the shades of red, orange, yellow. Colour black, grey and white are neutral colours and are used to break patterns in a colour block display. Within apparels also I understood and learnt that products under menswear, ladies-wear and kids-wear are displayed very differently. The most exciting of them is displaying products in kids-wear and ladies-wear. In kids-wear we used to display merchandise as per the theme or character, for example, a collection of Pocahontas, Lion King, Thomas The Tank Engine, or Barbie, all the craze during the nineties, used to be displayed together, which means all tops, bottoms, accessories, toys, etc. of the same character or theme used to be displayed together in a special section created for the same, for which the visuals and props created also were portraying these characters. Separate section for separate stories within the kids department. This used to create an excitement in the kids and the parents and used to portray a very friendly environment within the store.

The ladies merchandise used to be displayed as per co-ordinates, where the matching tops and bottoms used to be displayed together or there was good colour combination used to display the merchandise. Also separate sections were created for teens, homemakers and office going crowd. Focus was to help a customer not to waste time in searching for a matching set, rather than provide them with one.

Apart from handling and managing the visuals of a store a visual merchandiser needs to maintain a register to keep a note of all the VM equipments used in the store. He needs to keep a track of the number of mannequins used in each department, the number of busts used for bottoms and tops displayed separately, number of signage holders, and all the other materials required for visual displays.. He is responsible to issue the right quantity of such materials as and when any requirement comes from a specific department within the shop floor.
I have noticed in many departmental stores the visuals used in mannequins are not at all as per required norms. I strongly believe that whenever a mannequin is being displayed with merchandise one needs to dress it in a manner he wants himself to wear. If he is convinced with the concept he can easily convince the customer on buying the product displayed on the mannequin. Hence it’s very critical how you display the mannequin. Mostly you will notice that a mannequin will be wrapped with so many merchandise and accessories or just draped in merchandise that it loses the idea behind it. When displaying a mannequin all the tags also need to be removed without fail. The idea is to make it look and feel the way a person in real will wear. Care should be taken when signage is being printed or talkers being created. All characters, fonts and colour used to make this signage need to be uniform throughout the store. Every week end the displays within the store need to be changed and the window displays need to be changed every two to three weeks. The visual merchandiser should be responsible for the same.

Merchandising is the art of displaying merchandise in an organised manner so as to offer the right quantity of the right merchandise in the right place at the right time.
Visual merchandising is the art of presenting the merchandise in such a way that it appeals a customer and attracts him to touch and feel the merchandise. It educates the customer and helps him in the buying process.
Visual merchandising is one of the tools used by retailers to communicate with customers.

Roles of VM:
Visual merchandising is not just about displaying products on windows. It has a major role during promotional activities of a product, or launch of a new brand. It enhances the product and the brand value whilst segmenting and targeting the market, positioning the brand in the market, and by serving customers. It helps to communicate to the customer new arrivals inside the store, the range of merchandise, the arrival of a new trend, the price of the product, and its features. It also helps in announcing the arrival of new seasonal and occasional products.

Usage of VM:
Visual merchandisers take the help of visual merchandising in their showrooms, and malls, to build awareness among the customers.
They use visual merchandising in their stores to make the merchandise more attractive and desirable to a customer to buy them in the store. It helps them to introduce their new product launch and to explain about the product details. It helps to showcase the store’s merchandise assortments, variety of collections, and various brands.. It helps to build the overall image of the store.

Understanding Visual merchandising in a retail store:
The following categories are used by a visual merchandiser within a store to showcase the various collection of merchandise-
Windows
Exterior
Interior
Remote