When it comes to the different types of retail shelving, the most common one is your gondola shelving. You’re likely to find them in the majority of stores and across all retail formats. That’s because they’re highly functional and can house all sorts of products. But what if you want to maximise their efficiency?
Considering that your retail shelving has a significant impact on your success, why wouldn’t you want to maximise what you have? It’s also important to point out that if you don’t attempt to get the most out of what you have in-store, you’re effectively wasting your space.
1. Consider using clip strips to maximise your gondola shelving
Clip strips, best described as thin pieces of metal or plastic with hooks placed at regular intervals, function as the perfect opportunity to maximise any shelving in your store.
Benefits of using clip strips
- More space for your best sellers. By merchandising products on a clip strip and not your gondola, there is more space to allocate to your top performing SKUs.
- Cross-merchandising opportunities. You can cross-merchandise any products that shoppers would use together. For example, you can place hair accessories next to hairbrushes and combs; mugs next to coffee; and toothbrushes next to toothpaste.
- Reduced fixture costs. When there are not many products in a category, it doesn’t make sense to build customised shelving that could result in unnecessary additional costs. That’s especially true if the product can fit on regular shelving or a clip strip.
- Increase exposure and more sales. You can use clip strips to increase the exposure of certain products in any gondola run across your store, which leads to more sales and profit.
How to customise your gondola shelving with clip strips
Having considered the benefits of clip strips, it’s essential to understand how you can customise your gondola shelving with clip strips.
Fortunately, there are various types of clip strips available to you, depending on what you want to achieve. In DotActiv, we have a standard clip strip that we can customise to your liking. A few clip strip variations include:
- Merchandising Display Strips: You can use these to hang the type of merchandise that you’d usually place on a hook.
- Custom Display Strips: If you have an oddly-shaped product or one that is bulky, you should consider customising your clip strip.
- Adhesive Display Strips. Best used for lightweight products, these strips give you the option of hanging merchandise in packaging that you didn’t initially intend to hang.
- Printed Display Strips. While your clip strips allow you to hang products, you can also use them as a branding opportunity, thereby increasing exposure to your entire brand instead of a single product.
2. Consider using grills to maximise your gondola shelving
For any retailer looking to maximise their shelving and present a neat appearance, it’s important to consider using grills on your shelving.
Grills are especially suitable to products that are small in size, products that you can merchandise on top of each other, or are a variant of an item with the same recommended selling price.
Benefits of using grills
- Improved shopper experience. Your products can appear neater on your shelf, leading your customers to have a better shopping experience. It also lessens the chances of products falling off the shelf, which can embarrass a customer.
- Customer education. You can place product information on any grills you use, thereby giving any shopper more information so they can make better shopping choices.
- Increased facings and optimised space. When you use a grill on a shelf, you can increase the number of Y facings. That’s because a product rests against the grill. Also, you can allocate more space to your bestsellers since you have more shelf space.
How to customise your gondola shelving with grills
- Customise the grill length to fit your shelf. In software such as DotActiv, you can customise grills so that when working on a planogram, it only applies to the shelving that carries the products that require a grill.
- Use Grill fronts and frames. These grills fit onto the front of your shelf only. A grill frame fits onto the front of your shelf as well as on each side.
- Add Perspex grills. When done right, these grills can enhance the store image as they are more visually appealing.
- Include Metal and wire grills. While not as visually appealing as perspex grills, they are still functional and can serve a purpose.
3. Consider using pegboards to maximise your gondola shelving
Pegboards are retail fixtures that make use of equally space holes and allow you to position pegs, hooks or baskets at varying distances.
If you were to consider which products best suit pegboards, they are usually those that can’t stand upright by themselves. A few examples include pool accessories, hardware tools, and stationary.
Benefits of using pegboards
- Reduces unnecessary shelf stock capacity. Because a pegboard has a limited depth, it’s difficult to overstock the shelf. That means less chance of the shelf looking messy due to over-capacity.
- Visually aesthetic. Pegboards provide breaks in regular shelving and draw the eye. Also, it’s easier for your customers to find and reach out for the right product.
- Allows for better use of shelf space. Pegboards aren’t as rigid as normal gondola shelving. Since you’ll have more leeway when merchandising products, you can optimise more space and allocate more facings to your bestsellers.
- Cross-merchandising. Similar to your clip strips, you can use pegboards to cross-merchandise products, thereby increasing the growth of multiple (instead of single) categories.
How to customise your gondola shelving with pegboards
- Easily adjustable. You can change the shelving as well as the hooks on a pegboard, depending on the products you want to display.
- Include more than just products. Considering the versatility of a pegboard, you can add various items and don’t need to stick to products. For example, you could place a holder containing marketing pamphlets or brand information. Coupons, testers, samples or a product that you can use in conjunction with an item displayed in the gondola run works just as well.
4. Consider using hanging bars to maximise your gondola shelving
Similar to pegboards, hanging bars also offer you the opportunity to hang products. Where they differ is in the appearance and structure.
As mentioned above, a pegboard has equally spaced holes to position pegs at varying distances. Meanwhile, a hanging bar is spaced like a shelf on a gondola. That means that products hang at the same height.
Benefits of using hanging bars
- You can merchandise products that you can’t place on standard shelving. If the size or shape of your product doesn’t fit the conventional shelf standards, you can stock them by placing them on hanging bars.
- It allows you to optimise shelf space. The fact that hanging bars can hold a greater quantity of items, you can maximise your space for more sales and profits.
- Improved shopping experience. When merchandising on hanging bars, your products can appear well organised and ‘browser-friendly’.
- Customer education. Since your hanging bars are similar in nature to your pegboards, you can also use them to display items other than products such as pamphlets and other marketing material.
How to customise your gondola shelving with hanging bars
- Customise the bars to your gondola width. First, identify any hangable products that you can merchandise on hanging bars. From there, it’s a case of making adjustments. You can include different peg lengths and widths based on product specifications.
- Place hanging bars strategically. You can customise your shelving by placing hanging bars strategically relative to your standard shelves. For example, you could place coffee refill packs next to your coffee tins.
Conclusion
You can find all of the above retail fixtures within DotActiv’s planogram software. What’s more, each is fully customisable to suit your specific needs and unique retail environment. You can visit our online store here or click below to find out more.
