Retail Greatness Blog

Regardless of your ability to have input on any given set, you should always strive to up your skill level. You never know when you'll be asked to run with a given set; and if you're prepared with awesome skills, you have a real opportunity to help your customers, their customers, and your career.

Visual merchandising can make the difference between a happy client and a satisfied one. I’ve talked to interior designers and merchandising consultants who’ve provided some great ideas that can help merchandisers create more attractive – and effective – floor, shelf and window displays. Here’s what they tell us…

Is your merchandising team paying enough attention to store displays? They should. Several years back, a study by Marketing Support, Inc. and Leo J. Shapiro and Associates revealed that about one-third of all consumers make an impulse buy every week, at a median purchase of $30. And store displays contribute significantly to impulse buys. Merchandise displays can do everything from resuscitate a slow mover to propel a new product into a must-have.

Chain Store Age recently posted an article about Google Express. It seems that households equipped with Google Home can now shop retail through the voice-activated assistant.

Amazon has a similar service in place known as Alexa. It looks like the so-called "internet of things" is set to invade the retail shopping ecosystem. Should you be worried about the above as a merchandiser? YES. Why? Because of the negative effect on your retail clients -- and how that will eventually dry up merchandising jobs.

A while back, we posted about 10 tips to help merchandise products effectively. That one got a lot of attention – with good reason. Merchandisers have to be constantly looking for ways to improve store results. So let's dive deeper shall we?

Our Winter '17 Release is a game changer for ESP clients. It's fueling an unparalleled innovation in Retail Field Management and Execution. No other company is delivering this quality of platform, extreme clarity, communication, and user experience to enable manufacturers, MSO's, and Retailers to transform themselves and connect with their customers in entirely new ways. And the best thing about it? 100% of feedback from our market is that NOBODY has the combination of tools, beauty, and simplicity that we have with this Release!

Did you see the stockout video I shot recently? It's incredible how often I see scenes like that!

I’ve been in the retail industry for many years, and there’s one thing that continues to confound me: why does this keep happening so often? It's a major problem, and it needs to stop.

We've taken one step to address the situation by releasing our retail execution software; and another with our educational blogs and certification site. But let me ask you this: how can YOU help to reduce the stockout levels at the stores you service?

I saw the joke below the other day, and it caused me to think about why some merchandisers fail in this business:

"A famous merchandising tycoon told the following story at a conference:

'There was town out in the Old west that had two general stores. Harry, who owned one of them was a workaholic. He opened early, stayed in the store all day and closed late. Even so, he barely made a living.

Larry, who ran the other store, came in at nine. At ten he went out back where he kept some cattle, and made all the cows turn and face north. After lunch, Larry went out back again and made all the cows turn and face south. This practice was repeated every day

Larry's store was successful and he became wealthy.'

As a Field Merchandiser (and/or Field Sales Professional) you may or may not have an exposure to (and an opportunity to be involved with) "Data." Data, sometimes called Big Data, has been talked about for several years now. Operations both large and small have been using data to help manage their businesses. But how does data actually improve your supply chain management?

The short answer is inventory tracking. However, data does more than inform you as to where a shipment is in the supply chain. We're talking inventory tracking on steroids! But you may be asking yourself, "Why should I care?"

Yesterday I wrote a post about Retail Execution with Emphasis on Stockouts and was discussing it with my Retail Execution Expert, Mitch Fields (follow him at twitter.com/themitchfields) and we started kicking around an idea to go out and just video how bad it really is out there. The results will BLOW YOUR MIND!

Are there excuses for stockouts? Maybe. Do retailers want to hear them? NO!