space planning Archives

“Spoil you Staff with Space!” and “Your Space with Staff!”

The Morning Post:- 22nd May “Spoil you Staff with Space!” and “Your Space with Staff!” Many discussions I have been having recently on allocating space within stores. The whole model is changing from those large product areas, static stockrooms, over-spaced or unruly queuing areas and pitiful backroom facilities for staff to one that reflects not only the requirements of the shopper but in fact what generates the income. Or it-

How Much of your Retail Space should be Allocated to your Staff?

Retail professionals are under extreme pressure to deliver what they always have, but now in a retail landscape that is being transformed by changing customer behaviour and a migration of retail sales to e-commerce, questions that have never had to be faced before are now becoming uncomfortably relevant… I have witnessed some unseemly “scraps” for store square metres in my time between competing categories all trying to get as-

Does your store backroom space show you value your staff?

The Daily Post:- 5th April Does the amount of store gross sqm you dedicate to your staff really show how much you value them? I’ve been visiting stores of a couple of similar retailers in terms of their sector and size of store. They have different market positions but have the commonality that customer service is very important to their proposition and ultimately their conversion and profit. Despite the market positioning-

8th Joy of Retail Spring: Defining Omnichannel Assortments

The question “how much product should I put in my stores?” has always generated animated and healthy debate amongst retail businesses. That question, and the discussions around it, just got a whole lot more complicated as the opportunities and threats of e-commerce and true omni-channel assortment allocation has made store capacities one of the most important decisions for retailers to get right. The reduction of physical store capacities for an-

3rd Joy of a Retail Spring – How much product in my stores?

Space planning & visual merchandising are the two cornerstones on which an attractive and commercial store are built At the heart of this is the eternal question – “How much product should I put in my store?” Get space planning wrong, allocate product incorrectly or deliver visual merchandising operations inefficiently and a store will never attain its potential sales productivity. Marrying the “beauty and the beast” of the assortment comes down-

Am I displaying with the correct option density?

Am I displaying with the correct option density? How to have your cake and eat it! Some of the most obvious questions are often the hardest to answer, or to be more accurate it would seem, are the ones that no one wants to answer. The repercussions of this “small question” are very great for a number of functions within a retail business and though ultimately the answer may-

Tim Radley “Visual Merchandising; a Return to Selling” No.1

“Visual Merchandising – A Return to Selling!” part 1 An article by Tim Radley in VM&RD Magazine India, Oct 2015 I was fortunate enough this year to be invited to speak at the In-Store Asia 2015 event in Mumbai. What I found was energy, enthusiasm and real excitement about the future of Indian retail and this great industry in general. Subsequently I have written a couple of articles for VM&SD Magazine, India’s only-

Retail Integration: Integrating Space Planning with Assortment Planning

Whether your retail involvement comes from a field based visual perspective or from a head office commercial perspective stores can often disappoint, both in terms of the visual perception and the financial reality. Whilst there will be opportunities for improvement in both store and head office processes, it is often the integration of the two where the problems lay and in particular the relationship between space planning on the ground-

Visual Merchandising Operations: The dangers of “spread-sheet retailing”

Many a good and potentially commercial idea and initiative has never made it from the boardroom to the operational teams, never mind the stores themselves. The complexity of the modern store portfolio has added to this problem, as stores develop a mixture of owned and franchise stores, international coverage and increased store grading and clustering by customer demographic and catchment. Simply one solution will not fit all and in-

Welcome to VM-Unleashed!

…the formal, but mercifully brief, introduction. I’m Tim Radley and I started VM-unleashed! in 2007. For 20 years I’ve been working with a variety of international retailers, identifying opportunities to increase sales through better integration of space planning & management, visual merchandising & store operations and ultimately creating a better store experience. Catch my profile on LinkedIn…always happy to connect! My experience is that there isn’t a retail business that-