Merchandising: Less is More

Meghan Boyer

Different theories exist regarding how many products to include in retail displays: “There’s minimalists and everyone else,” says Steve McShane, owner and general manager of McShane’s Nursery & Landscape Supply in Salinas, California. The non-minimalist retailers have a tendency to want to put one of every product in a display and fill it to capacity—or in some cases beyond capacity.

Rather than showcasing a store’s options, cramming too many items into a display is more likely to confuse or frustrate a shopper. “Customers are so time-pressed. They come into a store, and they spend less than 30 minutes. You don’t want to frustrate them,” says Larry Pfar, director of merchandising and product development at Bachman’s in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area.

Rather than oversaturating a display, a good rule to follow is keep it simple, says Larry. “Use fewer items, but more of them is best,” he says. “It’s easier to understand, and quantity creates impact.”

The goal of grouping different items together is to get shoppers to purchase more than they initially expected to buy, says Bob Phibbs, CEO of The Retail Doctor, a retail consultancy firm. “When you load your store with merchandise and stack it all together, customers see gobs of individual products face-out, just like the big boxes do. To compete, you must not look like them,” he says.

Rule of Three
It’s important not to place one of every item for sale in the store in a display, says Terri Coldreck, an industry merchandising consultant with Color Results. Instead, try to include three or less product types in a single display.

For instance, a birding display may include a birdhouse, some seed and maybe one additional item, she says. For plant material, instead of including eight different colors of impatiens, select a light pink, a dark pink and a medium pink.

“Multiples of three go well together,” says Steve. “Any more than that or any less than that and the customer is trying to put something together—or they are too overwhelmed.”

This methodology is easy to see at work in national retailers’ displays, says Terri. A Williams-Sonoma display might include a cookbook, a KitchenAid mixer and pancake mix—the essentials a customer needs to complete the project.

Indeed, the display should tell a story to the customer, and it needs to show how to use the products in it, says Steve. “A nice display would include one-third plants and pottery together, one-third pottery and one-third plants,” he says.

If a display requires a lot of time to set up or replenish, chances are it’s too busy, notes Terri. “An end cap shouldn’t take you any more than 20 minutes,” she says. “If a display is taking you longer than that, it’s probably too fussy and complicated.” Simple displays are easy to create, refill and add signage to, whereas combining many products in one display complicates the situation greatly.

Looking at other stores is a good way to get inspired and see different examples of displays, says Larry. “Think about a Crate and Barrel store. The displays are straightforward and simple,” he says. “When you look at their formula for merchandising, it’s as basic and simple as it gets.”

Simple displays also will help retailers determine which items are not selling well, says Terri. “You can stand in an area and look at your display pieces and say, ‘I am selling that. I am not selling those,’” she says. It makes it easier for retailers to take in everything visually.

Impact Through Abundance
A simple display helps customers understand the purpose or point a retailer is trying to convey, says Nancy Proman, director of independent retail services at Dynamic Experiences Group LLC. “Displays should be able to convey a message, be it color, a particular plant/pot or price point,” she says.

Impact in a display can come not from having many different products grouped together but from having many multiples of two or three products, says Larry. “Nothing creates impact like color,” he says. “You show a lot of them, and that color creates the attention.”

Indeed, the purpose of displays is to create impact and attract customers’ attention. They should be full, and merchandise should be replenished frequently so the effectiveness of the display is not diminished, says Nancy.

In May when garden centers are busy serving spring shoppers, a display may be filled to the brim with products. “We are selling it so fast in the display, the pots are literally touching with perennials,” says Larry. Further into the season when traffic slows, retailers can start spacing the containers out.

Consider a supermarket end cap, says Terri. Typically, such a retailer includes a mass of one or two products at the end of the aisle. “Normally, that makes you think, ‘Look at that. It must be a good product,’” she says. “People buy from abundance. A display with a few products, people tend to pass that by.”

Some product types, however, may benefit from different treatment, notes Steve. The volume of items included in a display depends on the product, and in some circumstances, it may be better to offer fewer items, he says.

For common, popular items, a garden center can show it has many of them in stock with a full display. “But when you are trying to differentiate yourself on selection or uniqueness to what you are offering, don’t make that point,” Steve says. For items that independent nurseries have that the big boxes don’t have, “I prefer to give customers the idea that it’s unique and there’s not too many of them.”

High-ticket items “need to be given the respect they deserve,” says Steve. “When it comes to the lower-ticket items, the creativity comes in and all the rules of merchandising come into play.”

Determining how to best display an item should start long before the products hit the sales floor, says Terri. “Our industry doesn’t buy properly. They go to their local trade show, and it’s like a shotgun going off. Wherever the pellets land, they buy. But in the spring, they have no place to put it,” she says.

Instead, garden centers should plan and buy for their spaces, an essential tactic with hard goods. “If you had planned your space, you would have known you don’t have room for it,” says Terri. “Planning what you are going to buy and where you are going to put it is huge.”

Ultimately, when it comes to displays, retailers should “just try to keep it clean, neat, simple and easy,” says Larry. “Don’t overcomplicate it.” GP

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Meghan Boyer is a freelance writer based in Chicago, Illinois.