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Retail Report: Developing a Successful POP Display

Stock or Custom?

To begin your considerations, you must decide between stock or custom displays. If you have a limited budget and tight scheduling requirements, you may wish to choose from a broad variety of stock POP displays. These are constructed from stock tooling and molds. One option is the modular floor-display rack, which is durable, economical, and constructed from high-quality plastic. It is perfectly suited for end-cap, corner, or island merchandising. Shipped knocked down for freight savings, it sets up easily in the field without tools. Some racks are available as gravity-fed floor stands to keep products facing front and to minimize restocking efforts at the retail level. Shelf organizers include expandable, spring-loaded tray systems, clip-on shelves, Mini Visi-Slides, and serpentine dispensers.

One recent innovation for retailers is the Visi-Floor system, which offers total versatility, enabling the retailer to customize its shelves to display nearly any type of cosmetic, pharmaceutical, fragrance, or toiletry, in any section. Its gravity-fed feature saves labor costs by eliminating constant fronting, reducing inventory checks, and delivering easier product rotation. It features self-lubricating, injection-molded technology that enables products to literally glide off the shelves into consumers' hands.

If you have an extensive budget and are looking for that one-of-a-kind image, consider a custom POP display. Custom displays are only limited by your supplier's imagination and can be tailor-made to meet any brand's design or budget specifications. Innovative, custom designs include interactive floor stands, animated and electronic displays, electric clocks, corrugated prepacks, acrylic plaques, and molded counter displays.

The ABCs of Merchandising

When developing your POP display, whether stock or custom, consider these design and marketing ideas:

• Integrate merchandising into your initial marketing plan. Your merchandising goals should be in step with your marketing objectives. Be sure to allocate a merchandising budget initially, such as allowing 5-10% of your product wholesale costs for merchandising. Don't underestimate budget or turnaround. POP displays enhance product launches, build volume sales, reposition product lines, target new audiences, promote new uses for product, and support sales promotions (couponing, premiums, etc.).
• Stimulate interest in an established product with an eye-catching, in-line display in store aisles.
• Generate sales during the important holiday selling season with innovative POP displays. Consumers are looking for solutions, ideas, and convenient buying opportunities, and well-designed merchandisers provide them.
• Cross-marketing makes buying easier in stores for the busy consumer or working parent. For example, combine cosmetics and personal care products with fashion accessories such as earrings or purses.
• Your POP display should transmit the sales message quickly and effectively with bold graphics and attractive design.
• Increase your chance for prime in-store position by creating a display that is easy to set up. Many stores have downsized and do not employ the staff to apply special attention or time to POP assembly. Test assembly and clarify set-up instructions, if necessary.
• Use light and motion to attract consumer attention and increase sales.
• Displayed products must be highly visible from every possible angle and from great distances.
• Successful merchandising reinforces your advertising and marketing messages, including brand benefits, logos, packaging design, and unique selling propositions.
• In-store displays reflect your company and brand image. They should be attractive, user-friendly, and developed with the most sophisticated technology and product knowledge available.
• Customize your display with special features, like brand-specific graphics and colors, headers to maximize brand awareness, wheels for cross-merchandising, literature racks for add-on sales, gravity-fed tracks for first-in/first out rotation, etc.
• Bigger is not always better. An aesthetically pleasing design should attract consumers without being supersized. There are times, however, when oversized displays are most effective.
• Rules and regulations vary from retailer to retailer, industry to industry, and state to state. A reputable supplier will know these guidelines and help you avoid costly mistakes.
• Multifunctional displays offer greater usage. For example, you may wish to design POP displays that can adapt to both the floor and the shelf.
• Modular designs offer versatility, enabling your display to be stacked in many configurations and sizes to accommodate varying amounts of products and retail settings.
• Don't begin POP design until you have enough product samples to load your display and determine its effectiveness, strength, capacity, etc.
• Your merchandiser should be field-tested for safety so you can avoid sharp edges, weak construction, or other defects. Such testing also enhances consumer friendliness, understandability, and effectiveness.
• POP displays should be reviewed, evaluated, and revised on an ongoing basis.
• POP designers should know more than good design—they should understand

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