While it might not seem so, the retail shelving you use in your stores has a major impact on your success. The right type of shelving can see you selling heaps of product and making a healthy profit month in and month out. The wrong type of shelving, however, can severely damage your business.
And it’s not just your monthly sales or profits that it affects. The wrong shelving can also affect the overall reputation of your store and have an impact on whether or not customers want to shop your stores.
Don’t want that to happen? Below are a few signs to watch out for to ensure you don’t use retail shelves that will end up killing your business.
1. When you have the wrong type of retail shelving for your products
There are many different types of retail shelving that you can use in your stores. There are your dump displays (dump bins), rolling racks, and F-Stack displays. There are your gondolas, wire shelving, and pegboards. There are pallet racks and G Cut-case displays and end caps. We could go on.
Considering the many options available to you, it doesn’t mean you need to include them all. Rather, you need to choose the shelving that best suits your stores. Imagine, for example, you’re a high-end clothing retailer selling to LSM 9-10. They expect a certain quality when they come into your store. And this expectation is not just around your product. Your shelves also need to be aesthetically appealing.
You’re thus not going to use a dump bin - commonly used for reduced stock - in your store because it will give off the completely wrong image.
Remember, the point of shelving is to present your product in such a way that your customers want to buy your goods. Even spend more than they had initially intended when walking into your stores. That’s not going to happen if you choose the wrong shelving.
The wrong type of shelving will do nothing for your reputation.
How do you fix it?
One way of fixing this is to consider your products first and understand their unique selling point.That is, ask yourself what is the most attractive feature of your product. Once you have this in mind, you can go about looking at which shelving will complement that feature.
For example, if you’re selling seasonal products or have a range that is regularly reduced, a dump display will work well. If, on the other hand, you have products that are best displayed when hanging, a pegboard would be best.
You can also read our article on the different types of retail fixtures. And that is regardless of which type of retailer you are.
2. When the retail shelving you use wastes your store space
We’ve written in the past about how retail fixtures can be used to not only refresh the look and feel of your store but also call attention to specific merchandise. That said, it’s important to note that shelving can lead to a wastage of your stores’ space. That’s if you’re not careful about choosing the right shelving.
Since the goal of shelving is to present your products in a way that leads to increased sales and profitability, you can’t afford to waste any space.
For example, if you have a small store, you’re not going to include a massive two-sided gondola that takes up so much space that you don’t have enough room for other displays. You might want to rather include a one-sided gondola and placed it against the walls around your store.
The same could be said if you have a large store and choose to have small retail displays that can get lost amongst all of your merchandise.
How do you fix it?
Fixing this problem is fairly simple. And it usually starts with your floor space. As mentioned in a previous article on shelf capacity, floor space can go a long way to helping you to ease shelf congestion.
But understanding your floor space isn’t only about giving your categories the right amount of space to ensure they perform at their best. It can also be used to figure out what kind of shelving can fit into the space that is available to you.
If, for example, your highest selling product is larger in size, you’ll need to dedicate more space (and thus purchase a bigger shelf) to present it properly to your customers.
3. When you don’t adhere to common shelf planning principles
As much as it’s important to have the right shelving and ensure they take up the appropriate amount of store space, none of it will matter if you don’t adhere to recommended shelf planning principles.
There are specific reasons for these shelf planning principles. Besides improving the aesthetic appeal of your shelves, they also make it easier for your customers to shop your store. As a retailer who is intent on making a profit, the last thing you’d want is to make it harder for your customers to shop your stores. Hence your principles.
But it’s more than that. These principles may seem small and insignificant, that’s not true. They allow for an uniformity that goes beyond aesthetically appealing shelves and filters into the overall look and feel of your store.
How do you fix it?
Again the solution is fairly straight-forward and simple. When it comes to your shelf planning principles, it’s all about following them as closely as possible.
A few recommended shelf planning principles include:
- Merchandising your products from premium to economy and left to right;
- Merchandising your products by sub-category first and then by brand;
- Using colour block merchandising wherever possible;
- Placing your house brand next to the brand leader;
- Ensuring you best-selling products and profit generators are at eye level; and
- Allocating space on the shelf by equalising days of supply.
By following the above principles, you’ll have happier customers who enjoy shopping your store. Don’t think that that’s not important. You only need to look at examples of bad retail displays to see the consequences of not taking it seriously.
