Extracted from the article on “What is the Future for Visual Merchandising?” a first collaboration with VM&SD Magazine, India’s only magazine to focus on all aspects of retail design and visual merchandising in the context of branded shopping environment.
“What is the future for visual merchandising?
Part 2 “Forget people and forget VM!”
This is at the heart of a perennial and essential dilemma. How do retailers make VM work in their businesses, with what people, what processes and what tools?
The classic window dressing heritage is as relevant as ever, however the future will be a continued evolution and closer integration with other retail departments that will take visual merchandising from the stockroom to the boardroom, taking visual merchandising to a new area of influence.
The changes in an increasingly “hostile” retail world, created by both competitors and by consumers themselves, will shape the scope and role within each individual business.
Unpredictability will test the versatility of visual merchandising.
Stores are becoming more different in shape and size, with more varied roles; the assortment is becoming more dynamic, variable, segmented and clustered in ever more customised ways; the customer is evolving to be more complex, more individual, drawn from a wider international base, whilst even the store personnel have more diverse working cultures, routines and principles for displaying and selling.
A substantial test of visual merchandising will be to deliver brand consistency across these “shifting sands.” It will open up the question of whether all stores of a particular retailer should look the same, and if so how is it possible?”
Are you making the most of visual merchandising in your business?
Do you integrate it correctly with your other retail functions?