Just how important is visual merchandising?
Consider the cupcake. Absent its top, you have a bland brown (or yellow or red…) cylinder that’s not especially appetizing. “But add some frosting and sprinkles, and you have a product that people will pay $4 or $5 for,” said Gregory Nato, who’s served as creative director of such household names as Macy’s, Montblanc, Polo Ralph Lauren and Victoria’s Secret.
“Visual merchandising is your book cover. It’s your calling card. It’s the story you share with the world to entice them into your shop,” Nato said during a recent webinar, Visual Merchandising 101, with Floral Strategies President Tim Huckabee, AIFSE.
Selling beautiful flowers isn’t enough to pull people in, Huckabee said. “Every day, consumers are bombarded with alluring visuals,” he said. Like the aforementioned cupcake or a J. Crew window or catalogue (this particular author’s personal weakness).
Though what’s appealing is subjective (a Talbots window would likely provoke eye rolling from a teenager, while a dELiA’s display might make the Talbots shopper gag), good visual merchandising follows a few rules, Nato and Huckabee said. Among them:
· It informs a customer what you offer.
· It gives a mental picture of how someone could use and enjoy your product. (Huckabee calls this “the mannequin effect.” Clothes look better on a body and flowers look better in a vase than a box.)
· It arranges product in logical categories that make shopping easy.
· It includes lifestyle vignettes that make customers fantasize about having your product in their world.
The hour-and-a-half-long webinar was chock-full of practical tips and analyses of good (and not so good) floral designs, which I’ve promised to not give away for free. But you can purchase the program to watch with your staff again and again. Check it out here.
Consider the cupcake. Absent its top, you have a bland brown (or yellow or red…) cylinder that’s not especially appetizing. “But add some frosting and sprinkles, and you have a product that people will pay $4 or $5 for,” said Gregory Nato, who’s served as creative director of such household names as Macy’s, Montblanc, Polo Ralph Lauren and Victoria’s Secret.
“Visual merchandising is your book cover. It’s your calling card. It’s the story you share with the world to entice them into your shop,” Nato said during a recent webinar, Visual Merchandising 101, with Floral Strategies President Tim Huckabee, AIFSE.
Selling beautiful flowers isn’t enough to pull people in, Huckabee said. “Every day, consumers are bombarded with alluring visuals,” he said. Like the aforementioned cupcake or a J. Crew window or catalogue (this particular author’s personal weakness).
Though what’s appealing is subjective (a Talbots window would likely provoke eye rolling from a teenager, while a dELiA’s display might make the Talbots shopper gag), good visual merchandising follows a few rules, Nato and Huckabee said. Among them:
· It informs a customer what you offer.
· It gives a mental picture of how someone could use and enjoy your product. (Huckabee calls this “the mannequin effect.” Clothes look better on a body and flowers look better in a vase than a box.)
· It arranges product in logical categories that make shopping easy.
· It includes lifestyle vignettes that make customers fantasize about having your product in their world.
The hour-and-a-half-long webinar was chock-full of practical tips and analyses of good (and not so good) floral designs, which I’ve promised to not give away for free. But you can purchase the program to watch with your staff again and again. Check it out here.
