Merchandising Idea

Easy way to display product and create interest in the walls.

Quote Of The Week

“Customers don’t always know what they want. The decline in coffee-drinking was due to the fact that most of the coffee people bought was stale and they weren’t enjoying it. Once they tasted ours and experienced what we call “the third place”.. a gathering place between home and work where they were treated with respect.. they found we were filling a need they didn’t know they had.”

Tipped Signs

Tipped signs are a great way to flag an issue with the signage, but when the pricing team goes home for the day and noon rolls around unsigned racks or those with tipped signs are not expectable. Once an add is set and signs are being fixed place a team member or two, supervisors are a good choice, to be in charge of signing. Make them responsible to checking with the signing team before they leave to see what needs to be fixed. All singing issues, including tipped signs, should be fixed within an hour of store opening.

Quote Of The Week

“The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work.”

-Agha Hasan Abedi

Merchandising Ideas

Idea for creating a great visual display on the wall.

The New Consumer:

It’s not surprising that in a time of recovery from the worst financial crisis in half a century people are changing their spending habits. Business that cater to more luxury items and services are seeing people turn away from them and instead choosing more piratical things to spend their money on and that trend isn’t expected to change anytime soon. Even with the return of jobs.

“We seem to be at a cultural inflection point that we haven’t seen since World War II,” said Jim Taylor, vice chairman of market researcher the Harrison Group.”People are getting used to being careful, and I don’t know how you undo that,”

Some luxury companies are looking to September 11th as an indicator of the spending climate. Hoping that once the economy turns that the consumer will follow and so will their money. However others still doubt that this will happen. Even though there is hope for the economy many people are still worrying about job loss yet to come.

According to the Commerce Department more people are starting to save than before the crisis.  The consumer is starting to shop for more products for more social, political, or environmental reasons. Even those who haven’t been impacted by the down turn are cubing their spending and not looking to flash their wealth.

What does this mean for many companies? They need to become conscious of what their customer wants. That could mean looking for products to become more green, even reducing the size of the logo and giving more bang for the buck. It’s time to reposition brands

5 Retail Trends of 2010

1. With web-enabled cell phones sales on the rise ‘several companies are looking to capture the mobile commerce market by enabling consumers to shop online via their phone.
2. Many retailers will be returning to niche speciality concepts until the market grows more.
3. Prime retail space has never been more available since the recession wiped out many retailers. This has left room for growth into new markets for many overseas companies. Meanwhile other companies are upgrading to better locations that they couldn’t get before.
4. Retailers will continue to look online for sales, but also use the info collected to make decisions on where to open new locations.
5. Even more designers will be looking to create secondary lines at moderate prices.