They have developed what I call, ‘Killer Categories,’ ‘Combined Categories,’ and ‘Coordinated Categories’ that shift the customer perception from visual order, through eye-catching impact, to dynamic inspiration.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a result categories now offer the double-whammy of benefits for retailers. On the one hand, their impact can be both authoritative & inspirational. On the other, categories can also be bought with less risk, and more chance of commercial sales, than the more unpredictable and lower-margin fashion themes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
‘Killer Categories’ create a Wow! reaction through their scale. They take the simplicity of choice and explode it through colour palettes and design variations into visual theatre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Best displayed across walls in highly-visual locations they can create initial ‘welcome statements’ or act as destinations to pull customers through shop spaces.
Consider the leggings of Lululemon, the denim of Levi’s, and the cashmere of Uniqlo, to the authority of tools in B&Q, the wall of TVs in Media Markt, to the impact of fruit & vegetable displays in Carrefour.
And behind the impact, there is now intelligent buying. There are less options than might be perceived, a focus on historical best sellers, strong image maker focal points, a reduction in conflicting patterns, and simplicity.
The more simplicity, the more power, the more authority and trust you can add to your best selling destination categories & your brands.
‘Combined categories’ replace some of the simplicity of ‘Killer categories’ with sophistication. The Wow impact is maintained but within a space matrix that encourages cross-merchandising and multiple purchases.
Combined categories display the logic of the vertical and the horizontal. In this way they combine related stories.
The simplest example would be vertical colour stories with horizontal style stories, or vice versa. Consider a wall of Primark lingerie, an Accessorize display of hats, gloves and scarves, Nike displaying football shirts, shorts & socks or stationery sets in different colours, patterns, paper sizes, and envelopes.
Combined vertical & horizontal stories can be categories, sub-categories & sub-themes, colours, sizes, styles, brands, and end-uses. But what makes ‘Combined category’ displays work is when both vertical & horizontal stories are both powerful in their own right, but become stronger, more relevant and more attractive, when combined with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
‘Coordinated Categories’ have become so widely used in fashion. They form the bridge between categories & themes, they have a simple clear strategy, but can be managed, displayed and remerchandised in loosely planned and spontaneous ways.
The principle is to display 2 complementary categories together. Each category is displayed independently, one above the other on walls, or side by side on tables. Each category has the power of choice in its own right, but can easily be bought together.
Consider the most common scenario of a wall of casual shirts displayed frontally along the upper part of the wall, with denim trousers along the bottom half. In summer T-shirts and shorts. In an IT shop, mice, laptops and keyboards, or phone cases, phones and phone charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fundamental rule for powerful & commercial ‘Coordinated Categories’ is to display 2 or 3 related categories often bought together, frontally displayed with high visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vertical product relationships can be suggested, combining a specific shirt and trouser that work well together, or which represent a high-margin combination, but customers are invited to combine whatever products they wish. And in terms of management and re-merchandising, there is no strict coordination to follow so options can be moved and new ones introduced in a dynamic and reactive way.
Behind all of these category strategies there is highly commercial and clever decision making. Unit depth in buying is based on historical sales analysis so that whilst a democracy of colour and styles is used to create visual customer impact, the buying depth reflects sales potential. Store display replenishment feeds the best sellers whilst starving the poor sellers.
And of course categories require best-practice coordination between buying, merchandising and visual teams, who together plan, buy and display pre-conceived category linear metre ‘product story blocks!’<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Missed any of the previous \u201952 Steps\u2019 then just click here to catch up\u2026<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Post No.12 in the weekly newsletter series: \u201852 Steps to the Perfect Shop!\u2019 You too can have \u2018The Perfect Shop\u2019 by this time next year! There’s a popular mis-conception amongst retailers that category displays in shops are not the most exciting way to attract customers. Facing after facing of the same product in every colour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26419,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,739,1179,31,854,308,307,6,17,466,130,23,306,494,305],"tags":[1146,1198,1170,1169,1171,1177,1140,1176,795],"class_list":["post-26411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-assortment-structure-planning","category-customer-experience","category-fashion","category-fashion-accessories","category-retail-organisations","category-space-management","category-space-planning","category-store-experience","category-store-layout","category-store-theatre","category-telling-product-stories","category-visual-merchandising","category-visual-merchandising-operations","category-vm-compliance","category-vm-operations","tag-52stepstotheperfectshop","tag-categorymanagement","tag-merchandising-buyingandmerchandising","tag-retaildesign-interiordesign","tag-retailmerchandising","tag-shopdesign","tag-shopofthefuture","tag-spaceplanning","tag-visualmerchandising"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/52-steps-12-categories-are-not-boring.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26411"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26659,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26411\/revisions\/26659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vmunleashed.com\/retailmeaning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}