Changing the Store Layout

Change is for many of us a hard thing to do. It is hard in the first place, to recognize that we have made a wrong decision or have taken a wrong way of doing things. Sometimes we just do not want to face it; we put the blame on something or someone else. Sometimes we need to change not for our own reasons but for the environment.


In the case of business it is not possible to slowdown changes; you will always have to change or it might affect your sales.


That of course applies to merchandising too and in a very strong manner given that the merchandising of a store or any other sales space will reflect directly on the profitability of the business. Effective merchandising will push sales in a store or supermarket (as you can see in many of the other articles I have written)


Why to change the merchandising, what is the trigger that should move a manager or owner of a store or supermarket to make changes, to initiate a (sometimes painful) process of change.

The main reason is one or more of these:

• A wrong store layout.
• Changes and evolution in your customers or clientele.
• Changes in the environment or physical area where the store is placed.
• Changes in the products offered by suppliers.

A wrong store layout
A wrong layout will confuse your customers. You may find them lost looking for products, going back and forth and/or trying to find the way out of the place.
It is like a mad house from where you want to run.


Change and evolution of the customers and clients

  


Customers are always changing and evolving. That is why you have to keep an eye on them and keep in touch with their minds. You can see that, nowadays, customers want to find more organic products, more fresh vegetables and fruits. I have seen supermarkets that have placed this section right after you come into it.


One year back or so, this area was to the back of the place.
People are taking care more and more of their weight; therefore you may have to make a bigger space for fat free items, for example. This same concept applies to any type of business. That is called market trends and you must keep up to them.


Changes in the environment or area where the store is located

To be quick on this one, think of a store placed in a residential area surrounded by houses. Now in a few years that same store could be surrounded by apartment buildings with younger couples and kids. This should bring a mayor change for the store.


Changes in the products offered by suppliers
These changes in the products refer to any evolution of products, think of deeper product line bringing more a more specialized offer from suppliers. This means more items into the shelves. At the same time, think of discontinued products, maybe your shelf should shrink. Maybe there are products replacing other products. All this, will make you move your shelf distribution or store layout.


How to proceed with the changes you need to do


First you have to conduct some investigation depending on what is moving you to change. Most of the times you may find all your answers within your customers, service users, buyers or clientele. You can make a survey. You can observe how they flow in the store. Take a look to your sales compared to the last year or the last three month or semester. Watch the trends, the tendencies of other stores compared to yours. Talk to your suppliers, they know a lot about your business. Watch your competitors, how they do things, are they changing?


Maybe you need to adjust the merchandising to respond better to the profitability of the products you are displaying. Maybe you need to switch areas or place more cashiers. Maybe you need new furniture, make the store look more cozy, maybe you need more or better lighting. What about the smells in the store or supermarket?


After you gather all the information you need to take your time to plan the changes that are going to take place. Now, before making this significant change that will bring you more results on sales and profits, take your time to think of the investment you need to do. Is it worthy to make these changes? How long is the store or supermarket going to take before rewarding the effort? Even if you are making these changes to be in tune with your customers needs, you have to go over it, and think or forecast the effects of the changes over your clients. One more think, how are your competitors going to answer to your change? What is your plan to win over any strategy those competitors will be putting in place?


Final step, implement the changes and promote them to your clients. Move forward, change because change is there and those who refuse to change will drop out of the market. You may maintain your clientele and attract new buyers.


Feel free to email me with your comments about this article...have good sales.

Merchandisers Mind Set

In this post I will be sharing with you the things that the members of a merchandising team consider to be the most important assets they need to do a good job or to get the job done.

This is the result of a small survey I conducted among some of the members of the merchandising team that I manage as par of my responsibilities working for a manufacturer in the foods industry.

I believe this is a good way to make us thing about how to help our associates to do a better job for us. Looking at it from a different perspective, how to help them help us in a more effective manner. I will display them in the order of the most mentioned to the less mentioned and will ad some personal ideas about each one. 


Which five things should always be present in the mind of a Merchandiser?

•  The Expiration date of the products.

This is in the top of the mind of our team members. It is of great importance to keep the products fresh and this is a very logical answer given that we are a foods manufacturer.

Nevertheless it is a major responsibility of the supermarket or store, we as the manufacturer, need to protect our costumers, our product, and our brand…our name.

This idea has been very stressed out into the minds of our team and is always been monitored by the supervisors of merchandising.

I have to say that here in my country there are some stores that aren’t very concern about this topic, in fact, some times our team have pulled out some items because they have reached the expiration date and the store personnel has placed them back in to the shelves. Many times they claim this was done by mistake but some other times we are sure it is just a lack of respect for the customers.

There has been, any ways, some advance with the work of the government institution that regulates this.

• Organization and cleaning of the products.

This one also has to do with the product it self. Now in this case, an error will not be as fatal as in the first topic – expiration date- because it has to do more with esthetic side of the products display and the way this display helps the sales of the store.

Now, it takes to be working in a dirty store for a merchandiser to have in mind that he needs to keep the products clean. This is the case of the majority of our merchandisers because in the big supermarket stores here, in my country, we use other type of personnel, they are female promoters that spend the whole day at the same store. They do the merchandising work and also they sell to the customers, nice.

Now a merchandiser needs to keep products clean and organized no matter what type of supermarket it is. We always provide our merchandising team members with all they need to do this because, again, the shelf is the silent sales person you have in the store but if the products are dusty or unorganized it will have less selling power. Imagine yourself trying to sell a dirty pair of shoes…or trying to sell a dirty box of cereal, how many people will you need to offer this item to in order to get a sale? If ever get a sale.

Now organization refers to various factors.

Filling up the shelf.

Giving product a good alignment in type row and column.

Placing the fresher to the back, in terms of expiration date.

Placing the label nicely to the front of the customer.

Placing correctly the POP materials.

Using the verticalization concept.

Using space the most effective way.

• Competition.

Our team has always competition in mind. We are always measuring our team member’s ability to gain space, to get “out of shelves” exhibitions among other things. Competition lowers their chance of doing a better job in terms of this. So they “sleep with one eye open”, always have to check their shelf space, always have to make sure the shelf is very well filled up with our merchandise to avoid competitor taking our space, that is our sales space, money space. Also, competition lowers our sales when do a special promotion or offer. So our merchandisers keep us informed and aware of competitor’s actions in the market.

• Been on time.

As I said before, our merchandisers, the ones we call that way, don’t stay in one only store, they move to different stores. Some times four to five in one day, so been on time is very important to them as they will meet better the objectives of their job. Our merchandising supervisors are always taking control over the timing of our team. This is for many reasons including labor reasons and marketing reasons. We have reached the momentum in which our personnel don’t have to come to the office before going to visit supermarkets, they are aware of the importance of been on time to their job. Jumping from home to their route gives them more time to work and reach the day’s objectives.

• Keep in contact, and have communication means (cellphone)

For various reasons this is important for a merchandiser to have the means to communicate with their supervisor and with the company.

Works out of the office.

Has a Supervisor to keep informed about any thing occurring in their route.

Needs to communicate with the company sales person who attends the store.

Has to inform of any change needed to be done in their day route.

Competition. As we explained before.

Client’s solicitations.

Needing of some materials.

There are other important thing for a merchandiser, such as, good communication with the store personnel, the store inventory and others but I just mentioned and commented the five most important.

These same things are the ones they think of for the next day.

They check their next day route. They take notes of any thing relevant that needs to be communicated. They prepare to go out on time to their route, verifying things like their means of transportation, their uniform, the materials needed for the day and so on.

I hope this information can be of help if you are a merchandiser, if you manage a merchandising team or own a store. Feel free to contact and make any questions about this topic.

That is it for now.

Promotional Events, General Understanding and Planning From a Coordinator's Point of View

This is going to be a very short article about what is known as Promotional Events. I say short because you could write a whole book about this topic as in fact there are. But I am going to refer only to the basics and will also try to do it from a marketing-business view.

There is another type of events more related to human resources development. That is not the topic of this article.

Promotional events, to me, are events just like many other events but with a (actually a BIG one) difference. These events have to bring back some results if not they will only mean a time and money waste. When done properly they could be the main reason for an increase in sales or brand recognition, a great way of positioning a new product or repositioning one, win the trust of some market segment, keep the competitors away of your customers...you name it. There can be as many objectives "as stars in the sky" for a promotional event.

Every social or business activity can be turn to a promotional event by giving it a marketing or a company corporate projection and objectives. Let us name some of the most commons commercial-promotional events:

- Trade shows
- Conventions
- Conferences
- Cocktails
- Press releases
- Demonstrations
- Openings
- Signing Agreements
- Forums
- Workshops
- Breakfasts
- Lunches
- Dinners
- Contests
- Tours (Factory- tours)
- Art Exhibitions
- Music - Arts Festivals
- Concerts
- Races

And the list will keep on going and going...

Promotional events have become a perfect tool to reach audiences awareness. We could say that there is no product or company that can not get some advantage by developing and exploding some kind of event. Many companies have into their marketing department a division exclusively dedicated to developing creative promotional events. Many times this marketing divisions are big other companies' prefer to work with subcontractors.

Usually these divisions have a coordinator or manager, supervisors and promoters. The coordinator or manager is the person in charge of the big picture planning, coordinating all about the event, subcontracting others (lighting services, catering, sound technicians, etc, etc). The supervisors are the ones seen that every thing is taking place as planned and the promoters are the ones doing the heavy work. The ones at the bottom of the command line build a lot of experience and may grow to a supervisor-coordinator position depending of their good and hard work.

Now, let us say you want to build some kind of promotional event.

The first thing you need to have is a clear objective.

This objective is what will give sense to the investment of time and money into the event. It is what will determine how much is worth this event for you and your company.

Now, where should this event take place?

What is the best time and/or timing to do it?

Some events are only effective if they take place in conjunction to other global or national moments or happenings.

What should be the theme of it?

Should you subcontract or should you put your hands in it?

How are you going to project the event?

What is the public you want to reach?

How much time do you need to get a good projection of the event?

How much money and resources do you have to put into it?

Gather all the information you can, do your homework!!

Once you respond to this questions and many others that will come up when you be doing the plan you need to go again to the objective and the result and see if you are been realistic or it is going out of hands. A good way to respond all this questions is not responding them by your self. Run a round table with your colleges. Make a brain storm. Put your self in the situation. Think as if the event is taking place now. Ask questions. Research, use the web, books, every thing you have in hands.

Great, every thing is good and you start. Now hold it. I recommend you use some computer tool to do a better planning there a plenty of them but I will not refer to any one here. This tool will help you set a schedule, budget and other factors on black and white so you are able to make a deep analysis of every detail and will have less (there are always going to be incidentals that will need to be faced) problems along the way.

Done, now you have not only a plan but also a schedule and a step by step process.

Start (sometimes you can be afraid of starting) and pay attention to the results all the time. Also, hold on to the budget. And again, ask questions to the client if the event is for someone else, to colleges, to other staff members, to your boss, to any body that might be of help or that is more experienced in the matter.

Do you need to change the plan? Is it better to do this another time? Do you have to do it in another place? Is it getting out of budget? Should you fire someone and contract somebody else? Should you drop it/cancel/get out?!

Sometimes there are hard decisions to make but you better take them or your boss is going to take it for you!!

And to make long story short, let us jump to the end.

The time has come. Every thing is in place, sound sounds great, lights are great, the master of ceremonies is on time, music is on time, speakers, drinks, food, souvenirs, guests, transportation, flight is arriving on time, and on and on and on.

Now measure the results, did you get what you projected you would get?

Rinse and repeat.

Jose Leonardo Guzman Manukyan Actually working for the marketing department of a mass consumer product manufacturer at the Dominican Republic since April 2000. My responsibilities are basically coordinating a promotions and events team along with trademarketing duties. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jose_Leonardo_Guzman_Manukyan

Que esperamos para actuar?

En esta breve entrada quisiera hablar sobre algo que está aconteciendo en la actualidad a mi alrededor.
Se trata de la inercia que a veces uno como coordinador o encargado siente que le rodea. Hablo sobre la poca iniciativa y conformismo que por alguna razón abunda en nuestros colaboradores.

Uno quisiera recibir nuevas ideas, recibir aportes creativos, sugerencias valiosas sobre como mejorar procesos, como mejorar nuestro servicio...por el contrario, existe una mentalidad que a la larga sacará a quien la posea de circulación y es la de esperar que los superiores indiquen lo que hay que hacer.

Que la empresa trace la pauta...aunque es la norma, un gerente espera tener colaboradores  que sean parte de la evolución, que empujen la evolución...diantres espero que yo sea así :)

En mercadeo, trade marketing y merchandising necesitamos personas así. Es cierto, en toda la empresa se necesita gente proactiva pero en el caso de marketing, trade marketing y merchandising esto se eleva al cuadrado porque normalmente el gerente pasa mucho tiempo en la oficina, idealmente no mas de un 80% de su tiempo, pero ese 20% a veces no es suficiente en un mercado competitivo como el que tenemos hoy día.

Si hay algún colaborador del área de marketing, trade marketing o merchandising leyendo esto, le invito a adelantarse y siempre ir uno o dos pasos delante de su superior, eso mi amigo, le asegurará aprecio y una carrera segura en este mercado.

Hasta luego.

Nuevo intento

Este es un nuevo intento...espero compartir informaciones interesantes para los visitantes sobre el merchandising y el trade marketing que son actualmente las obligaciones que ocupan mi vida profesional en la actualidad y desde aprox. 10 años.
Quiero que sientan confianza en escribirme a mi correo siempre que quieran saber algo sobre estos temas: jleoguzman@gmail.com