Effective merchandise presentation accomplishes a dual purpose:
It helps unlock the customer's buying impulses and, incidentally, rein forces the fashion and sales training that has been invested in the selling staff.
If you consider merchandise presentation as visual selling and visual sales training, you can see why it is such an important means of communication in fashion retailing.
Where Responsibility Lies
Merchandise presentation consists of both departmental display and stock arrangement. Both are responsibilities of the buyer, your store's fashion coordinator and display director may assist you in meeting this responsibility at times. Especially is this likely to be true when there is a storewide fashion event in progress, or when your department is experiencing a complete change of layout and decor.
The day to day responsibility, however, remains yours, whether or not you personally conceive and execute the ideas around which your displays and stock arrangements are built.
Wherever you find the talent for expressing your department's fashion message visually — in yourself, in your assistant, or in your sales people – develop it! It can be one of your department's major assets. It may be necessary to assign much of this activity to others who have more time or more talent for visual merchandising than you do.
Your responsibility, in such cases, is to make sure that the fashion and selling messages come through clearly to those who work on merchandise presentation for you, and, through them, to the customer.
Your Target Customer
Your first step in planning merchandise presentation is akin to your first step in planning your merchandise assortment: Consider your target customer. She may or may not be exactly like those served in other departments of your store.
If yours is a "special" department, such as bridal, or teen, or avant-garde boutique, your merchandise presentation should emphasize the special quality of your customer and your merchandise.
If yours is a "regular" department, aiming for the customer served in most of the store's other departments, then the image you project should be carefully integrated with the storewide image.
The limiting factor in developing a distinctive atmosphere is the degree to which your department's target customer differs from those served by the store as a whole.
Store policy and store image must be respected in whatever you do. Avoid making a radical change without first consulting your merchandise manager to make sure you do not run counter to store policy.
The First Impression
The importance of the first impression your department makes upon the customer cannot be overstated. She is on your doorstep. A great deal of advertising, window display, and past contacts have been invested to bring her to this point.
Your department's first impact upon her should invite her in by telling her what you stand for. You should state your fashion message clearly.
For example:
If you believe in a new color, have plenty of examples of that color right at the entrance to your department and in many of your feature displays.
If you believe in a new look, display that look prominently throughout your department. Don't let clearance racks or anything else dilute that message, "This is new"!
If your department is dedicated to women who play their fashions safe, your racks and feature displays should show many versions of accepted, well entrenched looks. An occasional forward-looking style should be used to give authority, but should not dominate.
If your department is fashion first, price later, be ultra-conservative about price signing. Keep your clearance rack well in the background. Make fashion points with the merchandise itself rather than with signs, as far as possible. Your knowledgeable customer doesn't need to have the story spelled out.
If price is important to your customers, state it plainly in your signs. And since price customers often need reassurance that the fashions they buy are safe investments, let your signs spell out the fashion message.
"The new, longer skirts", for instance, or "This winter's way with scarves". Decide on your message - young, or first, or firmly accepted, or whatever it may be. Then try to look at your department as if you had never seen it before, and see if the message is clear to a customer at the very first glance.
Check branch departments in the same way. Since you don't see these so frequently, any false notes in their appearance will stand out sharply on your visits.
To get a fresh viewpoint on your home department is a little harder. Make a conscious effort, after an absence of a few days in the market, or even after a single day out of the store, to look at the department as if you were a customer.
Watch for: inconsistencies, lack of emphasis, sloppiness, missing signs, poorly coordinated apparel and accessories, and anything that dilutes your fashion message.
Feature Displays
The object of feature displays in a fashion department is to help the customer visualize herself wearing the fashion look you are sponsoring or the specific articles you are promoting.
Your feature displays are your first big step toward converting the passing customer into a looking customer who may soon by ready to buy.
A plus benefit of good feature displays is that they get a message across to the sales people, even the part-timers. They see these displays all through their working day, help keep them tidy, and absorb the message without even conscious effort.
Reaping the Benefits
Good merchandise presentation is one of the least expensive but most powerful forms of selling at your command. It addresses itself to the customer who has already responded to the store's reputation, advertising, and windows, and who has already reached the entrance to your department. The time and thought you spend on departmental display constitute one of the best investments you can make toward converting her from passerby, to looker, to purchaser.
