The commercial value of retail display cabinets
Do not ever underestimate the impact that display marketing can have on sales. Retail businesses can maximise the appeal of their products and draw more attention to them, by choosing well-designed retail display units. Combine that with an experienced window dresser, and you have a perfect combination of product and presentation that can drive sales. If you are a store manager or retail designer, you would do well to look at successful businesses in your own sector, and study the way in which they have used glass display units to maximise their turnover. The way the items are displayed in some of the most successful jewellery stores for instance, is no accident. It is a carefully planned process that starts from the shop window through to the interior of the store.
In some regards, the shop window is the business’s most prized asset, as it is the gateway to the till! You can maximise the potential of glass display cabinets by setting them up in the shop window in order to create interest in your products. Try and figure out how to maximise the impact of window displays in this way. A start, is to place your most in demand products here, especially if they are not available elsewhere. It's also good place to entice the customer with special offers so that they feel compelled to walk through the door.
Sometimes it can be a big mistake to overstock display cabinets in shop windows. Too much and this can create what is known as option fatigue and confuse the potential customers. It's better to display just one of a particular in demand item to create the sense of scarcity, rather than pileup 20 of them altogether. If a potential customer believes just one of those items is available and they are appealing, they are more likely to want to come into the store and check it out. It creates the feeling that they might sell out quickly.
Another way to take advantage of the commercial value of glass display units is to place them at the point-of-sale. This is a tried and tested tactic that can be used with almost any products. Supermarkets are probably the most annoying practitioners of this art, displaying sweets right near the checkouts at low levels to entice children to badger their parents into buying something! But if you are a bit more subtle, you can take advantage of this sales psychology without being overtly pushy.
The idea, when boiled down, of placing display cabinets at the point-of-sale, is that people have already got their credit cards out! Rather than try to upsell a very expensive product at this point in the sales process, you can use your glass display units to highlight less expensive items that the customers may see as some kind of accessory to their main purchase. You could also attempt to display products that are generally known as impulse buys at the point-of-sale area. Your own observations will enable you to maximise product placement here.
Another important concept when taking advantage of the potential of display units to sell products for you, is the geography of your retail premises. Try to observe the routes people take through your store and think about ways to maximise the placement of glass cabinets in order to almost force them to see what you have on offer. The home furnishings retailer, IKEA, creates a route through some of their larger stores which forces potential customers to view virtually every product they have on sale. The route takes a spiral from the entrance all the way through to the checkouts. You may have products that people are just bypassing, which could potentially have great commercial value that are just being ignored. Because of the size and design of glass display units, you can easily use them to create a definite route through your premises so that nothing gets missed.