Post No.14 in the weekly newsletter series:
‘52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’
You too can have ‘The Perfect Shop’ by this time next year!
Make room for ‘heroes’ in your shops. Your hero products live for excitement so lets show them off to the customer
What are your hero products? They are the products that are essential to your proposition and your financial performance. They represent what the customers like most about you, or what you would like them to, and what they buy the most from you over time.
If no ‘hero’ products spring to mind at this stage then you are in some trouble as a brand and as a retailer!
A good place to start is with your bestsellers, your continuous best sellers. These should always be displayed prominently for as long as your customers love them and buy them. Create stories around them, expand the range with variations, refresh them, and display them with power, in blocks to impress the customer.
Commercial heroes and their prominent location and displays represent one of the key principles about making money in shops. “Show off to customers what THEY want to buy! Put your best product in your best places!”
This is what is called ‘Best-seller Merchandising!
This might sound like total common sense. However some shops persist in displaying products that aren’t selling for far too long, in the vain hope that by simply making them most visible they will suddenly become best sellers.
It doesn’t work that way. If any product is given a fair chance to sell well and doesn’t, then it is because there is something about that product that the customer doesn’t like.
Accept reality, cut your losses, cut your prices, and get some cash from them back into your business!
This is called “Worst-seller merchandising!” It is a disaster. Not only does it make your shops look terrible to customers, it undermines your brand and assortment credibility. It also means that true best-seller heroes are hidden away from the customers.
It must be ‘Best product in the best places. Heroes in the best places!’
So what about other potential hero product that are not necessarily the best sellers, but are important for other reasons? The important place to start is by thinking what messages about you as a retail brand are most important to the customer . What are you known for? What makes you a destination?
This perception could be about price, fashionability, brand choice, own-label, dynamics, excitement, impulse, authority, local, artisan, exclusive, sustainable, ethical…etc.
For example, if competitive or low price is important, then display ‘hero price products’ clearly to show immediately that you are selling at the prices the customer wants. If the brands that you sell are important, then ensure that ‘hero brands’ are displayed prominently.
Your strategic hero products could be anything, but they must be important for your commercial proposition and to help define an accurate and favourable perception of you in the customers’ minds.
Whatever the message, ‘hero products’ must all be displayed in high visibility places, with visual power, simplicity and confidence. These are your heroes so be confident in them. Display them, show them off, talk about them.
This is also important because “heroes have halos!” It is your job to make those halos as wide and bright as possible. Just a few bold product statements can make an enormous difference to your brand perception and your sales performance.
20% of your products, your ‘hero products,’ will probably form 100% of your brand perception!
Of course, there will need to be a ‘hero’ strategy behind every hero product. A strategy that is coordinated through your business from boardroom planning, buying & merchandising, that forms your marketing calendar, your shop space allocation, display, replenishment and customer service.
Heroes are not built in a day. They need ongoing maintenance, updating and evolution. Don’t let them fade or disappear without a fight, because finding new ones is very difficult.
So always be imaginative, and always be brave in how your grow your heroes. Always learn and understand what the customer actually like about them, so this knowledge can be used to build your next wave of brand and commercial heroes.
The importance of ‘heroes’ cannot be underestimated. Many large brands have created commercial empires around just a few hero lines. Think Converse, think Burberry, Moncler, or Fred Perry. So make the most of them at every opportunity.
Employ ‘best-seller merchandising. Employ hero merchandising!’ Don’t hide heroes away for a rainy day, because if you do that rainy day may arrive sooner than you think. And in such cases no amount of hero sunshine will clear those clouds away.
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…