Post No.13 in the weekly newsletter series:
‘52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’
You too can have ‘The Perfect Shop’ by this time next year!
Our fashion shops must stimulate and they must inspire. In contrast to categories, ‘themes’ with coordinated options of different categories are an essential part of this inspiration.
Themes can inspire with colour, with fabric design, with materials, with fashion styling but as with all things qualitative and creative they must obey quantitative rules to be commercial.
Products which are in a ‘theme’ are glued together through their visual attributes. For the customer they tell a single story. But the first decision for you, is how many different products to have in your theme.
At one extreme we have ‘silhouettes’ which may consist on only 4 or 5 options taken across tops, bottoms and accessories. At the other extreme we can have 20, 30+ options taken from several categories, spanning everything from blouses and t-shirts, through dresses, knitwear, outerwear to trousers, skirts, leggings and all types of accessories.
The beauty of silhouettes is the simplicity. The simplicity in buying, displaying and selling to the customer. However, remember that silhouettes need to make a strong statement that not every customer will like. Silhouettes are really a take-it or leave-it proposition so make sure you don’t fill your shops with inspiring, exciting but ultimately ‘leave-it’ propositions.
In contrast, themes inspire with a visual idea but then give the customer choice to explore and interpret that idea how they want to. Themes will be highly commercial if you adhere to the commercial rules.
The first decision is how many options to put into your theme. Best practice benchmarking shows that between 20 and 20 options gives good choice without diluting the visual intensity. But this could be small, or larger, depending on your brand confidence, your assortment size and shop sizes.
Then behind the total numbers you need to get the correct commercial breakdown of product categories, the balance of tops and bottoms, the correct weights of blouses and knitwear, trousers & dresses…etc.
You also need to construct your theme so that you have 25% image makers with design impact but probably lower sales, 25% basic lines which ‘bulk-up’ a theme and will sell, and the all important 50% of planned best sellers which closely align to customer taste and design tolerance and which make any theme a commercial success. And don’t forget to focus on your high-margin options.
This is why themes are more complex than silhouettes to construct but ultimately more commercially important to produce.
Quite possibly the most -overlooked facet of fashion themes is time. Shops are 4-dimensional, where the 4th dimension is time. Your assortment and themes need to be 4 dimensional. Your themes need to be not just ‘a moment in time’ but ‘moments through time!’
This is of course why you must always plan for periods of time, a season, 3 months, a month, depending on your sell-through rates, your supply chains, your open-to-buy, and your in-season buying capacities.
From both shop operational and customer experience perspectives, your themes and your stories must flow. How will your stories flow visually and commercially? Will some last just for a month-of-fame, whilst other slow burn through the season? Visually, how will you fade out old stories, integrate new options, land totally new themes, whilst maintaining your commercial balance of product types and roles?
Themes are totally inspirational to design for, to display, and to buy as a customer. But they represent everything which encapsulates the complexities of retail merchandising – the combination of the quantitative & the qualitative.
Make sure you’re always on your ‘A-Game’ when it comes to coordinated themes.
For everyone looking to improve their physical shops, or thinking of opening their first pop-up or permanent shop.
The weekly newsletters, and the 10 content modules they feature, have been created from my experiences of opening hundreds of shops, of all different sizes, situated across the world, selling just about everything there is to sell.
Every week we explore the sequential process of physical shop development to help you deliver your perfect shop.
Missed any of the previous ’52 Steps’ then just click here to catch up…