In our 50 years in business, we’ve created a process for how to ensure a successful retail POP display in-store merchandising launch that will ensure that you achieve a 300% return on your investment.
Do You Have the Right Channels?
The process begins with understanding what the retailer will allow for a display. The first step is to see if you have the right retail channels that are open to displays. For example:
- Pallet displays for warehouse clubs and home improvement stores
- Floor and PDQ countertop displays for big box retailers and pharmacies
- Floor and on-shelf displays for grocery stores
Understand & Establish Timelines
A good understanding of your customer helps to establish a timeline for the decision making and approvals. This is the best way to ensure that all decisions are made in a timely manner and makes everyone accountable for the success of the program. Otherwise, you can easily miss crucial deadlines, which is a great way to send your stress level through the roof.
Define the Product & Count on the Display
We recommend that you have an approval of the product and its packaging from the retailer before you start manufacturing the display. This helps prevent any issues you could encounter after you go to production such as product fit and count. A rule of thumb is to present your supplier with a full complement of product to verify the display ahead of time.
Often when product isn’t available due to completion of tooling, product specifications and drawings may be used to initially develop the packaging or display. This is not the final test though, once product is available it must be confirmed that the fit works. Manufacturers often say they don’t have the product yet, possibly because the molds are not complete. If you can’t get finished goods, you will need the exact specifications to develop the planogram. We recommend that you plan for some wiggle room. You’ll want to avoid planning for 80 boxes to display only to discover that 66 will fit – the impact on revenue for both you and the retailer take a big hit in this scenario.
Third-Party Testing of All Structural Design Elements
Testing (ISTA) is critical so that you know the packaging and displays will hold up through transportation and distribution, all the way to the store. For example, one of our customers chose to use an existing box for their product, but in a different configuration. Fortunately with our internal testing we found that the product packaging would not survive and would end up damaged when it arrived at the retailer. We then had to scramble to find new packaging. Fortunately, our resourceful team came through but there was a lot of stress for all and minimal additional costs for our customer.
Just remember: test, validate and repeat.
Easy Setup
There are different types of displays and setup options. The right one largely depends on the type of retailer and their requirements. Pre-pack displays ship from the your factory or co-packer with the product on the display and require little or no assembly at the retailer. Warehouse club stores like Costco, Sam’s Club and BJs all want pre-pack pallet displays or pre-packed PDQs in individual shippers. These PDQ’s normally are racked at the club store.
A “near pre-pack” option is using knockdown displays (e.g. flat corrugated displays) that are shipped along with the products on the same pallet. Near packs are used when the product is too heavy to ship on a temporary display partial pre-packs are also possible, especially for grocery, as are knockdowns with shipping filler airpacks if the product is at high risk for damage.
All of the above makes it easy for retailers to set up your display. If you use a third-party merchandising team, then we can create more creative displays that may be a bit more complex to set up. The “store-within-a-store” or “shop-in-shop” is a good example of this where we can create your own branded retail environment within a specific retailer or other non-retail locations like airports. These can include temporary, knockdown displays as well as permanent displays.
Need Help?
If you need help to ensure that your next retail POP display launch is successful, talk to us. We can review past retail displays and how whatever problems that you experienced can be eliminated, we can review your display plans and help you create the retailer pitch and we can execute your display plans to ensure maximum product sell-through and a 300% ROI.
