MERCHANDISING 101 ✅
Within this deck you’ll find all of the tips and tricks to visual merchandising at LUSH.
Remember that merchandising should be tonnes of fun, so get those creative juices flowing and get your team excited about their shop looking the best on the high street.
Created and last updated: November 2023
Always remember these fundamentals when merchandising
PLANOGRAMS
If you’re a visual person, you may benefit from utilising a planogram before getting stuck in merchandising. This is also a fabulous way to get ahead of the game for large merchandising sessions that will be needed for seasonal ranges. You can find images of the AYR products here.
Planograms are a great training tool also, you can utilise them for delegating visual merchandising to those passionate in your team, and you’re able to direct and give feedback before any real changes are made on your shop floor, this will help to improve productivity, too.
Speaking of training, here’s a great energiser activity you can do with your team to demonstrate the importance of reactive merchandising!
VM STYLES
Here at LUSH, we tend to use two different types of VM styles. Watch this short video here to understand the difference between the two. Both have their time and place on all shop floors regardless of whether you’re pine or reclaimed or new concept, both are incredibly impactful and require close attention to the basic VM principles of contrasting colours and fresh, vibrant products being the focus.
Market style
Uniformed
SIGNWRITING
Getting one or two of your members of staff trained in signwriting is a great idea ready for those annual price changes on your shop floor signage.
For wayfinding signage (the signage above units) you will need this to be completed by your local signwriter.
To request this work to be done, use the SSP request form here
PLANTS AND INGREDIENTS
Always remember that product is king, and we would always prioritise using our precious shop floor space with shoppable cosmetics for our customers. However, sometimes we use fresh ingredients and plants here at LUSH within our Visual Merchandising as a pop of colour, to showcase a message of ‘fresh’, or, to simply fill a gap in those ‘unshoppable’ areas.
The main thing to bare in mind is that these require maintenance, if your store’s a high turnover and you’re not in a position to keep on top of these, putting best selling products or POS signage in replacement of plants or ingredients may be more appropriate.
BEST SELLERS BEST PRACTICE
When merchandising products with multiple sizes, always have more larger sizes out than small, to encourage customers to instinctively pick up a larger size.
Think about who would be shopping from this level
Best seller
Non-Best seller
Good merchandising should buy you some time in busy periods from needing to constantly stock your displays
When placing your products on the shelves think of what will be “eye-level” for your customers and pop your best sellers there.
For products that are popular with our younger customers such as fun or jellies, are these in the right spot on your shelves?
ADAPTING YOUR VM TO SUIT THE NEEDS OF BUSINESS
Back in 2020, the global pandemic meant that we experienced a change in the landscape of retail, we had to adapt how our stores were merchandised to suit the needs of shoppers.
It’s important that you consistently review the shopping habits of your customers, and really know them to be able to merchandise in a way that suits them.
MEASURING THE IMPACT OF YOUR MERCHANDISING
It’s great practice once you’ve merchandised a range, to pop a note in your diary ready to review the results a couple of weeks on. Did it have the impact you were hoping for? What would you change next time? Has any results surprised you?
Below you can find some helpful resources to track the impact of your visual merchandising. We’d also recommend taking photos of your ranges once you’ve completed your merchandising to ensure your whole team can uphold the standards.