Opinion: Al Overton

Former Planet Organic buyer Al Overton discusses the fundamental principles of setting out your stall — otherwise known as merchandising.

I want to talk to you about the environment you create for your customers, about how you give a point of difference to your store and give people more reasons to visit. About the strongest lever you have to increase basket spend. About, at the most fundamental level, who and what your shop is. I want to talk to you about merchandising.

It can be a dirty word in independent-minded retail. I didn’t include it in the title for fear you would switch off and turn the page. Merchandising is taken to mean how bigger retailers do space planning and decide how many facings of tomato soup they need versus leek and potato. Or it’s dismissed as window dressing, something you might do for a seasonal display twice a year. So instead, let's talk about setting out your stall. That means communicating what you stand for and displaying your goods to attract customers. It means something you do every day.

You curate a range of products, balancing what you think customers want to buy with what you want to sell — with the values you bring to your store. I assume you’re proud of the products on your shelves and care about what your shop stands for; merchandising is how you show that, and along with customer service is the thing that determines the shopper’s experience.

Unfortunately, and this is where I might lose some of you, good merchandising is about structure, and if not rules, then let’s call them strongly encouraged guidelines.

Make it easy

It’s worth thinking about how you split your range so customers can navigate it easily, grouping products by categories or occasions. Consider having consistent shelf heights across the store and give enough space to get products on and off the shelf, giving them room to breathe. Don’t stack anything too high.

Merchandising is best thought of bay by bay, shelf by shelf. One bay should not bleed into another. Where possible, block brands or product types on a number of shelves — one shelf of oat cakes, two of rice cakes. Single facings of single SKUs tend to get lost; don’t be afraid to double- or triple-face to give prominence.

All of this takes space; one golden guideline is to not stock more products than your store can comfortably fit. By all means have abundance, but not mayhem.

It’s counter-intuitive, but larger sizes are better on the left, not the right — English is read left to right, and you want customers to find the larger product first. Arrange alphabetically where relevant — chocolate from Belize, then Costa Rica. The aim is to make it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for and discover what they didn’t know they were looking for. It will also make it easier to manage stock.

Champion your heroes

When I started in buying, I inherited a standard structure for looking at product ranges, classified by category and then good, better and best. Over time I dropped the good (who wants to only sell a product that is good?) but thinking about your range in terms of better and best is useful. It’s generally understood as a difference in price and quality but can be much more than that. Your best SKUs might also be based around taste, exclusivity, innovation, certification, environmental or social impact. They may just be your favourites. Identifying your best products helps identify your heroes.

Hero ranges are the ones that make your shop, your shop. They are unlikely to be widely available bestsellers, but instead are the products that give you an identity, a point of difference. What are your heroes in each category? If you don’t have a hero, find one. Your heroes then go at eye-level, with multiple facings, and ideally at least one shelf to themselves.

Stay on top of it

Products come and go, seasons pass, Easter eggs are replaced by hay fever remedies. Really engaging with your customers means being relevant, giving them what they want and inspiring them with what they didn’t know they wanted. If products aren’t selling, get them out. I don’t think it’s ever worth giving prime space to dead end or delisted stock. We want your customers to find new reasons to visit, by finding new products that they’re excited about. Through the seasons, the new products and delists, keep your merchandising tight, your store easy to shop and the products you’re most proud of in prime position.

This might sound like a lot of work, and you probably think your store looks just great, thank you very much. But I see the impact of clear merchandising and interesting range curation as the difference between browsing and shopping. I hate shopping — it feels like a job — but I love browsing, taking time to indulge in something I’m interested in, and being open to inspiration. When customers shop, they buy what they need and leave. When they browse, they give you their most valuable commodity: their time.  Focus on getting customers to spend their time in your shop — spending their money will follow.

Al Overton, Wonderland Ventures