Retail display advice for newsagents

Newsagents rarely have retail display experience.  They don’t usually consider retail display experience when hiring new staff.  This leaves the focus on retail displays a low priority for the business.

That said, creating retail displays is something I am often asked about when I speak at newsagent meetings.  Newsagents want to know more about creating displays.  They ask as if there is a prescription for success.

Retail displays exist for one purpose only, to sell product. This is the most important piece of information to keep in your mind when preparing for and creating retail displays.

Too often, newsagents and their employees get caught up in the excitement of a new display and forget the single business imperative of making money.

Newsagency suppliers, too, get caught up in the excitement of making something attractive rather than valuable. Many suppliers prefer to reward retailers on an attractive display more so than the sales it achieves since for the supplier a billboard promoting their brand is what they want and not so much the sale of their brand in your store.

Everyone involved in creating visual merchandising ought to remember these four key retail display principles:

1. The sole purpose of any retail display is to drive sales. This means that the most attractive presentation may not be the best. It also means that a billboard display which promotes a brand without drawing shoppers in may not be the best.
2. You are not your customer. You are not creating a something for your own pleasure. It must appeal to your customers, so much so that it drives them to spend money with you.
3. Customers get bored easily. Change your retail displays regularly. Such change could be moving the location through to complete replacement.
4. Measure everything. The value of the space, the time it took to create the display. The financial return earned by the business from effort.

If you feel like you are in a bit of a rut with your visual merchandising, consider these suggestions. They are designed to shake things up and help you find new energy and focus for creative and commercially valuable retail displays.

1. Work out the return on investment from your last ten displays. The average becomes your benchmark.
2. From now on judge the value of displays by the return they achieve.
3. Learn what your customers respond to and do more of this.
4. Break out display opportunities in your store by the strategic, big picture, display spaces and the tactical, smaller spaces designed for impact sale opportunities.
5. Try out everyone in the retail business for creating displays, even your back room people.
6. Be ruthless, if a display is not delivering a return in a reasonable period, say the first day, take it down.
7. Build displays which suit your business needs, not necessarily the needs of your suppliers.

It all comes down to one key point – making more money from retail displays is easy once you understand that displays in your store are solely about making money.

Newsagents often tell me that they understand that retail displays are about making money but they rarely demonstrate this in their business decisions.

From the top of the business down, focus on displays which make money and, yes, the business will make more money.