Ideas to Help You Effectively Merchandise Your Store


Store Merchandising Ideas



Studies have shown that customers buy when you deliver properly chosen merchandise, sold in a pleasant shopping environment. This merchandise must also be well presented, properly priced and most of all – in stock. Merchandising is more of an art than a science, but there are a number of general guidelines that you can consider when placing your merchandise on your sales floor. Some of the most important ideas are as follows:


- Maximize your sales floor space - you cannot sell merchandise out of your stockroom
- Present your merchandise in a fashion that supports a counter-clockwise customer traffic flow, which is common
- Create unique departments with logical complimentary merchandise
- Make sure your offering is deep (numerous different types of the same item) as well as broad (numerous different items) as long as you can keep the items selling
- Try lifestyle merchandising, appealing to customers who lead a certain type of lifestyle and buy related goods
- Consider what types of sales floor fixtures will work best for you and show your merchandise in the most attractive manner – these can be low, medium, or high-density fixtures
- Know your top twenty profit margin items in your store and feature those items prominently
- Make sure you utilize the right number of checkout areas (cash wraps) so that customers do not have to wait long in lines to check out
- Make sure your signage (for departments AND pricing) are attractive and easily understood
- Merchandise high-margin “impulse items” near the check out area
- Create a tasteful clearance area in the store to collect old and slow-moving merchandise, mark it down aggressively, and sell it as fast as you can
- Watch your customers shop and pay attention to where they go, the order of departments (or areas) they tend to shop in, and where they spend most of their time – then re-do the areas they are least attracted to

These basic ideas will help you to drive more sales and will make the sales you make more profitable. Additional ideas can be found at the Furniture World website. You can contact us at WWW.AtlantaRetailConsulting.com.