P-O-P at Retail: Store Relations

Retailers often have a difficult time making display materials work successfully in their stores due to the large number of store configurations within their chains, the need to squeeze every bit of efficiency out of floor space, and the lack of staff to deal with P-O-P. But they've come to understand the power of communicating clearly in their aisles. As a result, retailers are relying on marketers to better understand their strategic goals and the logistic demands that ensure the display actually makes it to the floor as designed. "When we consider merchandising programs for our stores, we start by looking at three key elements," says Dave Davis, director of marketing for TruServ Corp., Chicago, the cooperative representing True Value Hardware Stores. "We look at the category offering and, if it's complete, we look at whether the products are grouped properly. We look at whether the materials convey the right information to the consumer. Each answer is based on that store's needs and the retail sales movement from our database."To emphasize that direction, the company opened a dedicated visual merchandising department in July. Its goal, Davis says, "is to work through our own departments on the front end to ensure our suppliers understand our needs and are in alignment with our goals so the materials have the best chance for success when they reach all of our stores."The first result of that focus came this fall with the rollout of a 40-foot woodcare department. "We ensured that we had a strong fit for decor, signage, P-O-P materials and private-label packaging so nothing was fighting with other elements when it was assembled in the store." The company has also eliminated the Coast to Coast and ServiStar brand names, picked up in earlier consolidations, to focus brand identity on the True Value name.Such hardware cooperatives, which include Ace Hardware Corp. among others, present more challenges than other channels. They not only have a wide variety of store shapes and sizes, but they can only suggest programs to members, who then decide on their own whether or not to use them. "We're not like a franchise or chain where stores follow the dictates of corporate," explains Davis. "That means vendors have to be more flexible and work more closely with us."Retail Needs VaryIndeed, some home center retailers say that vendors don't understand the distinctions among different channels, which makes their materials ineffective many times. "I really don't care what material a display is made of or what it looks like," says Ron Scheiblauer, director of visual merchandising and signage at The Home Depot Inc., Atlanta. "I want to know if the manufacturer really understands how to grab the customer in the store, challenge him to think about the product, and buy it now and in the future."Creating P-O-P for the home improvement industry is a difficult challenge for suppliers, Scheiblauer says. "With all due respect, P-O-P manufacturers look at other industries that aren't ours when they put together displays. They're too focused on creating a freestanding display, selling a bunch of them and making a lot of money. Beverages, cosmetics, cigarettes andsuch categories are so unlike ours. They're all emotion-based. We're entirely different."Vaughn Hayes, vice president of store planning for Lowe's Cos., North Wilkesboro, N.C., agrees that image orientation isn't what his chain is looking for. "Our displays are becoming more upscale as we try to move the customer higher on the value continuum," he says. Depending on the department, that means either providing a good-better-best comparison or a better explanation of how to accomplish the specific project for which the product is designed. "We work with the vendors to find the best approach for their products, but we control the presentation." Determining the key needs for each channel represents a fundamental challenge to getting store placements. "We're seeing more natural materials and sleeker looks for displays overall, particularly in products like apparel, home furnishings and cosmetics," says Christine Jobes, vice president of membership services for the National Retail Federation (NRF), New York. "The goal is to give them a contemporary look, but so much of what a retailer wants depends on that retailers' goals."The sporting goods channel, meanwhile, is finding customers with more immediate needs, according to Gisel Pineyro, graphics designer at Foot Locker, New York. "Our customers are responding more today to quick, in-your-face offers and discounts instead of fashionable designs or image-oriented pieces. They want added value at the point-of-sale."Video stores are also finding value in P-O-P and are gearing displays to their visual audiences, says Marcy Magiera, editor of Video Business magazine, Los Angeles. "Because so much of the business is rental, stores tend to use more standees and announcement materials," she says. "But even those are becoming more efficient with each side promoting a different movie." They are also becoming more elaborate with sound, motion and interaction.For video sales, Magiera adds, most displays are for short-term promotions, although the types of promotions are growing beyond movie introductions. "The biggest time of year is definitely the final quarter, especially for the holiday season, but studios are trying to create more events throughout the year," she says. "They're definitely trying to promote other holidays, such as Valentine's Day, Easter and Halloween to add sales in those periods." The biggest complaint she hears is that smaller stores don't receive enough P-O-P, as key suppliers focus their attention on bigger accounts. "The small stores are being left out," she says.Space Efficiency a MustRegardless of channel-specific requirements, retailers are looking for concentrated efficiency of space as they try to clean up the clutter on the floor, while still maintaining plenty of merchandising messages and off-shelf product locations. "Individual buyers are responsible for their real estate. In most cases, because of our store's sizes, they don't have the space to give a particular brand additional display space unless that display is especially meaningful," says John J. Juszczyk, manager of new store merchandising for Walgreen Co., Deerfield, Ill. "We tend to work closely with the major players in each category first because they already occupy real estate and we want to make it as efficient as possible. But even then, a lot of displays are rejected simply because they occupy space rather than enhance the merchandising efficiency."TruServ's Davis agrees that displays have to work harder these days in order to reach the stores' aisles. "We want our vendors to help us take a 10,000-square-foot store and have it react and function with the efficiency of a 13,000- or 15,000-square-foot store," he says. "We're not looking at square footage in the stores any more, we're talking about cubic footage and square inches. Vendors need to be conscious of those changes."Ace, too, is looking for efficiency and has set up what it calls a "Discovery Team" to facilitate communication of effective ideas. The team works with member stores and vendors to find merchandising ideas, including adjacencies, displays, signage and locations, that have proven especially successful for a store. They then work with other stores of that size or demographic to help fine-tune their presentations using these ideas. "We want to find commonalties within departments and among products and merchandising that work well so we can produce a repetitive pattern that others can duplicate," says Jane E. Brill, marketing promotions manager for the Ace Hardware Paint Division, Matteson, Ill. Flexibility Yields More PlacementsBeing efficient chain-wide often requires great flexibility in materials, retailers agree. Expanding beyond a floorstand and countertop option to include banners, floor graphics, ceiling danglers and other formats offers chances for acceptance in a higher percentage of stores. "The types of pieces our stores can use varies a lot, so we like to see options," says Foot Locker's Pineyro. She singles out clear acetate banners and ceiling mobiles as options growing in popularity in her stores.Adds NRF's Jobes, "Sporting goods stores, in particular, seem to be trying new types of displays and are also open to using new technologies to convey their messages. We see a lot of fun things happening in stores such as Niketown, where they incorporate a wider range of P-O-P materials."Certainly, the desire to take displays off the floor is changing the types of materials that stores are considering. "We definitely encourage more use of sidewings and other pieces that stay off the floor," says Walgreen's Juszczyk. "We don't use floorstands. We prefer shippers that can either be placed on a shelf or fit an endcap."Vertical headers are a primary emphasis at Ace, notes Brill. "We are trying to make better use of the overhead space and use fewer horizontal headers." But in some cases, where stores use 7-foot racks, the vertical headers don't have enough clearance, which limits the options. Ace is encouraging suppliers to create more aisle violators that protrude into the aisle from shelves to draw attention and to avoid horizontal pieces that require an expansive amount of shelf space.With real estate becoming more valuable, some retailers are urging vendors to consider their products from the first moment of impact. "We want them to start by looking at their packages and work from there," says Home Depot's Scheiblauer. "Is it informative? Does it convey the key message? If it satisfies the communication needs on its own, maybe you should stop there and not confuse the customer by adding more than is needed."But as packaging materials are reduced for environmental and presentation reasons, the ability to communicate more on-pack is limited, providing even more incentive for packaging and merchandising to work hand-in-hand.More Customizing DoneWith more specialized needs developing, retailers are calling on vendors to work more closely with them to customize merchandising materials to their desired shapes, locations and decors. Foot Locker offers a menu of standard sizes for its vendors to use in creating displays, Pineyro notes, as do many other retailers. Adds Ace's Brill, "More customized brand signage is being used as our buyers try to take ownership of what the vendors want to do." Lowe's stores accept very few vendor-produced displays, Hayes says, as buyers prefer to work with each vendor to produce merchandising pieces that meet Lowe's specific needs and blend seamlessly into the company's decor. "We are always looking for ways to work more closely with our vendors to produce better displays, but we want to control our own destiny. That's our key message." In some cases, that means joining vendors together in a co-branded display, such as bath vignettes. Those are coordinated with Lowe's internal design department, which works with the vendors to produce a prototype that is then installed in stores by a combination of corporate and the vendors' staffs, depending on the situation.Meeting the needs of each store in the chain can be difficult when sizes and shapes vary dramatically. TruServ's needs for a variety of display configurations can be represented on a bell curve, with some stores way too big, too small, or too far from a standard presentation or from a traditional layout to consider a specific unit. "We try to work with retailers to ensure their displays are within one standard deviation from the mean average that will work best for most stores," Davis explains. "With 8,000 stores, many of which are very different in configuration and needs, it's a real challenge. We want our vendors to try to be as flexible as possible to handle as many options as they can. Flexibility is a key determinant in how many placements a vendor will get from us."Simple Assembly EmphasizedWhile retailers emphasize their strategic needs to ensure displays fit their merchandising message and store configurations, a considerable amount of their interaction with vendors today is also focusing on the nuts and bolts -- literally. "When we have input upfront on a display, we try to stress that the assembly must be as simple as possible," says Walgreen's Juszczyk. "Anything that comes in parts will be a problem to get up in the store, and getting store personnel to read complicated instructions and find all the pieces to put it together is difficult. It's tough enough dealing with the basic accessories of the permanent store fixtures and ensuring we have the various sizes of pegboard hooks, dividers and shelf-management tools we need."Foot Locker's Pineyro agrees. "Complexity of the display is a major concern," she says, and crystal clear directions don't offset that. Buyers typically prefer simpler assembly rather than better directions or a video, she says. "Most of our displays are on a promotional stage and last two to four weeks at the most. They have to be easy to put together." The home improvement co-ops echo those sentiments. "We're always looking at assembly as a key criteria," says Ace's Brill. "Our members are extremely busy and understaffed. Ease of assembly is a key factor in whether stores will use a display, and we keep it in mind when working with P-O-P suppliers." Adds TruServ's Davis, "We need displays that are easier to put together. Our vendors drop-ship displays to stores and our members have to assemble them. And we'll definitely get feedback if the displays are difficult to assemble."Working hand-in-glove with retailers on strategic messages, individualized formats, specific configurations and easy assemblies requires juggling many balls. That means knowing retailers better, which requires knowing their customers rather than relying on the retailers to supply information. "Some of the keys to good displays are common sense, but they're often overlooked," says The Home Depot's Scheiblauer."Ultimately, the key is for the vendor to communicate his key goals and benefits to the customer. But figuring out exactly what those benefits are for our specific customer and how he'll understand those benefits best is where it has to start," he says.

P-O-P at Retail: Store Relations

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