Design Merchandising: 5 R's of Merchandising, Merchandising Cycle, and More

Merchandising is indeed a smart way to boost your sales. And design merchandising is one such way to drive sales. This method is used by successful businesses to attract quality customers and build a strong base of returning customers. However, to employ this technique effectively, you need to understand what it is all about. 

Design Merchandising

Design merchandising is also known as visual merchandising. Design merchandising is a smart way to drive sales by changing the way you display various designs in your shop and how the products are arranged in your shop. This can be done in various ways by merchandising. Before we delve into the working of a fashion merchandiser, let’s understand the 5 R’s of merchandising.

5 R’s of merchandising 

The five rights or R of merchandising are as follows - 

1. Find the right merchandise for the audience to whom you are selling your products. 

2. Right location to set up the shop. This means that you should not be investing money to set up a shop at a remote location, where your sales will not be improved easily.

3. Right time, you must research the right time when you should be selling a particular product. This can also mean that you should modify your products and your business technique with the changing time by becoming more adaptive to the changes around you. 

4. The right quantity of clothes should be put into the store. By putting on an inadequate number of clothes, you would see a sharp decline in your products’ sale, which will have a very negative impact on your brand value. Moreover, the accumulation of old clothes will compel you to conduct frequent sales, which will eventually affect your profits. 

5. Choosing the right price to sell your product is also very important for you. To make your business successful, decide on a price that gives you adequate profit and also does not scare away your customers. 

Steps Of Design Merchandising 

In design merchandising, you need to take care of certain aspects that can be handled by a professional merchandiser. The work that a typical merchandiser will do for you are as follows - 

• Design the display in your shop to focus the attention of customers on a particular type of product range. 

• Make plans for businesses to help them increase their sales by using advanced software. 

• Research the industry trends and advise the business owner to modify their product or how they are displaying it. 

• Plan how shop owners can use their spaces to design attractive outlets that attract customers. 

• Arrange products in the right combination on the dummies to create a visual appeal in the minds of the customers. 

• Train the salespersons in the shops to help businesses increase the sales at their shop. 

• Monitor the sales of the products and the feedback from the customers.  

Techniques of Merchandising 

Every kind of merchandising, like design merchandising, involves four techniques, which are as follows: 

• Vertical merchandising - A way of arranging products from top to bottom to place more products at a place to drive sales

• Cross merchandising technique - In this technique, a product is placed with its add-on on the adjacent shelf. For instance, a matching shoe will be placed adjacent to a dress of the same color. 

• Horizontal merchandising - Horizontally arranging products in shops.

• Colour Block merchandising - It is the most commonly used method in design merchandising which involves displaying products of the same color at a place to create a visual effect on the incoming customers. 

Principles of Merchandising 

Merchandising involves various principles that you need to understand before employing design merchandising at your shop. 

Understand The Customer Demands

Every retailer should read the minds of the customers through feedback and the latest trends and offer what they want. 

Prepare A Plan

A fashion merchandiser prepares the blueprint of the shop based on different parameters such as price, category, and size. Stick to this plan for positive results. 

Select A Good Supplier

Finding the right supplier is very important to get the clothes and various accessories at a good price, which leaves you with a good margin to make a profit. 

Customer Relationship Management

If you have a returning customer at your shop, ensure that you stick with them and develop a good relationship with them. 

Cycle Of Merchandising

Several cycles go on in the process of merchandising. The operating cycle is the number of days a company requires to empty its inventories into revenue. The calculation of the length of the operating cycle can be done by adding the inventory period with the period in which the accounts are received.  You can shorten this period by taking advance payments and shortening the cash processing period. 

The above mentioned were the major sections that you need to understand about design merchandising. To know more about design merchandising, you can contact Fashinza. Fashinza is a B2B apparel manufacturing platform. They help clothing brands to manufacture their collections by connecting them with suppliers.