Aug. 19, 2024
The market is always in flux, and choosing between a custom retail display and a stock retail display can be a make or break proposition. Before you choose which type to buy for your campaign, you need to consider your entire plan.
Click here to get more.
Lead times are getting increasingly shorter for brands, which is why so many are opting for a stock display that can get them to retail sooner - but what they aren&#;t considering is what a custom display gives them.
A competitive edge is exactly what every brand needs. The ability to better target their customers, and the chance to use high-speed digital printing gives brands so much more control.
So before you make your next purchase, here are 10 things to consider before buying a stock retail display.
Contact Bennett today about a custom retail display
First, take into account your product type. Some products can do perfectly fine with a stock display, but if you have a unique option to display packaging and the ability to put your product out on display - you need a custom option.
Efficiently stacking your products allows for the maximum product to be on display, and allow retail stores to restock fewer times in a day.
Make sure you know your dimensions and are making the right choice for a display.
Next you want to figure out exactly how much product you can put on display. Some stock options will only allow for an option that gives you 25% less products than you want, do the math and figure out how much down time the display will have.
The display needs to hold a certain amount of product to make the economics of your supply chain make sense, otherwise there&#;s no point.
One of the biggest considerations is the load capacity of the display. How much can it hold of your product, let alone efficiently hold. Lightweight items may not have an issue, but electronics could.
Related: The Complete Guid To Retail POP Displays
Every retailer has a standard sales number per-square-foot of the display. That makes it an easy calculation for you to run the numbers of how much you need to sell. Plus you need to make sure your display is compliant.
A smaller footprint will increase your chances of getting a retail store placement, but it will also mean less products on display. So do your research and see which options fit your category, and what option is the best to stand out.
With a custom display and the right manufacturer, you&#;ll be automatically approved for your choice retailer or club store, and have a unique footprint.
This is the biggest issue with a stock display. While there are options to do slight alterations for a more custom look, the problem you&#;ll have is your display won&#;t attract customers.
Sure it will be a functional display, but how can you attract new customers to your brand if you take a plain approach like this?
Custom graphics aren&#;t enough. If you want to make an impact on your business, you need to come up with a product presentation plan that is tied directly into your marketing campaign.
Related: How To Use Color Theory With POP Displays
Next, think about your favorite brands. What displays do they use to enhance their branding? How can you take that same approach to your display? If you're planning on a holiday display, plan wisely.
Using a custom retail display allows you to completely control your brand and messaging to your customers in ways a configurable stock display doesn&#;t. From shape to product presentation and messaging.
Making your display be a part of your product experience, you can attract even more customers to engage with your products. Try adding Digital Printing for even more customization.
Related: 5 Marketing Tips For Retail POP Displays
Next, think about the entire supply chain and shipping costs of your display plan. This is one of the most important steps to understand which display type is right for you.
Sometimes your display shipping cost can be as much as a third of your entire display budget, but that might be exactly what you need. There are three main options for shipping displays.
First is KDF, or Knocked-Down-Flat. This is the cheapest option to ship your display. Your display is designed, printed, and shipped unassembled.
This means that you need to design a display that is simple enough to assemble for retailers or a 3rd Party Vendor. That also means you will need to print and deliver instructions.
Next is shipping an assembled display. You may choose to ship this due to the complicated display structure, or due to weight. This increases costs as you need to maximize freight capacity to cut down on costs.
Finally, this is an option we have a lot of experience with. We offer full turnkey operations with a Co-Packing division. This allows us to manufacture and assemble displays, pack it with products, seal the displays with a wrap, and then ship them nationwide.
The economics are very different between these three delivery options.
Though it is more expensive to ship retail displays that are pre-assembled, it can also cut costs in other areas and allow you to make more money when there is no assembly needed at retail stores.
If you choose to ship a retail display KDF then you will need to accomplish two more things. First, instructions that are easy to follow will need to be created and sent printed or digitally. Second, you will need to create a budget and timeframe to account for the time.
If a display assembly exceeds 15 to 20 minutes, then you may want to find a different display type. The reason is that will be either costing you money, or causing friction with the retailer.
getell supply professional and honest service.
The worst thing that can happen is a poorly or damaged display is at retail not attracting customers.
Next think about the durability of your display - or how long do you need it to last? The longer a display needs to last, the more you need to invest in your display.
If your products sell through in 5 weeks, then you could create a display that only needs to last that long before being disposed of. While a stock display will have general designs that can last long enough, plenty of them can look shopworn and attractive within 2 weeks.
By creating a custom display, you can choose the exact materials to give you the right display. Not only that, you can create multiple graphics and print new designs for a refreshed look at retail every time you replace them.
Related: Make Your Retail Display More Sustainable
Now you need to have a plant for retail display maintenance. How quickly does it look shopworn? How sturdy is it?
The goal of a display is to display your products in an attractive way and draw in customers, a poorly maintained display won&#;t do that.
Your retail display plan should take into account how often they need to be replaced. And you should consider having sales associates check the displays periodically to ensure everything is lasting as intended.
Will your stock display hold up? Or do you need a custom retail display for a sturdier design?
Finally, you need to consider the total cost of your display. When you take everything above into account and have a total retail program plan that calculates your return on investment. This final tally will help you determine if a stock display or a custom display is best for you.
Stock retail displays can be cost effective because there is no custom design time needed, so the display can skip a step - but a custom retail display can give you options that cut costs in other areas and attract more customers.
Sometimes the unit cost isn&#;t the best metric to decide your display option, but it can give you insight into an overall strategy.
If you&#;re still on the fence over which option is right for your campaign, it&#;s best to take a broader perspective, rather than choosing the cheapest option. When you do have a final budgetary plan together, you will be making a very informed decision.
Bennett is a premier packaging and retail displays manufacturing company striving to protect and promote our clients' products with customized corrugated solutions. When you work with us, you&#;re part of the family. We will partner with you every step of the way.
With our fully-integrated design-to-delivery process, we can be the single supplier source. We are an award-winning manufacturer of virtually anything corrugate. We offer everything from plain brown shipping boxes to sophisticated, high-graphic printed point-of-purchase displays, and everything in between.
Welcome to Part II of our 2-part series on the 10 things to consider before buying a stock retail display for merchandising. In Part I, we pointed out that more companies are opting for stock retail display programs since lead times are getting shorter and forecasting in the current environment continues to be difficult. In the first part of our series we covered the first 5 factors to consider: product fit, capacity, foot print, customization options, and configurability. Today we&#;ll cover the remaining 5 factors. If you missed Part I, you can check it out here.
As a general rule, knock-down displays are cheaper to ship than assembled displays; however, knock-down displays do require assembly at retail. As an example, we offer two different stock t-shirt cubby displays that look virtually identical. Each has its own advantages. One of them ships assembled on a pallet, and the other ships knock-down in boxes. The shipping economics are very different between these two displays.
T-shirt cubby stock retail display2. Assembly Time&#; Although it is typically more expensive to ship a retail display that is assembled, the benefit of doing so is there is no assembly required at the store level. However, because of shipping cost considerations, many displays are shipped knock-down so assembly time becomes an important factor to consider with the majority of stock displays.
Make sure your display manufacturer includes assembly instructions as well as the tools required to assemble the display and have a good understanding of the assembly time required. Once assembly time exceeds 15 or 20 minutes, you may need to consider an alternative display.
There is a clear benefit to stock displays that are quick to assemble such as our stock 2-sided slatwall display that assembles with just 4 screws in less than 5 minutes.
2-sided slaywall stock retail display3. Durability&#; Durability is an important element of display program economics. The longer your display can last, the higher your return on investment will be for your display program. Some customers gravitate toward corrugated displays because they are often less expensive than a permanent display, but they may not be thinking about the fact that a corrugated display may only last for 6 weeks before it starts to fail or before it gets tossed by the retailer when the product sells through. A permanent stock display that is built to last for several years is likely to be a good bet. We offer a heavy-duty metal shelf display that could easily last for more than 10 years in a tough retail environment.
Metal shelf stock retail display4. Ease of Maintenance&#; In selecting the right stock retail display, it is important to anticipate how easy it will be to maintain the fixture. Your display will almost always look great on day one when it is loaded with product, but how will it look when it is half empty or after a couple months of enduring a high traffic retail environment?
Make sure your display includes a good way to keep your product organized since nobody will care about your product and how your display looks as much as you do, not even a conscientious store employee. And, when selecting materials and finishes, think about what is easy to clean and does the best job of hiding dirt. For example, a display with a black base might look great until it starts collecting dust. Our UMF-24 shown below is a good example of a display that is easy to maintain. One of the benefits is that it is on casters so it is easy for store maintenance personnel to move it when cleaning the floors.
UMF-24 stock retail display5. Cost&#; Finally, there is the cost of the display. This factor is often the most important consideration in any type of retail program because the cost of the display is a key determinant of the overall retail program economics and return on investment. Stock displays can often be more cost effective than custom displays because there is no custom design time that needs to be incorporated in the unit cost and because stock displays are often purchased in relatively higher volumes compared to some custom programs.
In evaluating the cost of a stock display, it is important to have a broad perspective rather than just trying to find the cheapest display. The ultimate goal of any display is to generate sales so striking the right balance between display cost and revenue generating potential of the display should be a key consideration in the purchase decision.
Before you embark on your next stock retail display program, we would encourage you to consider the 10 key factors we have identified in this 2-part blog series.
Jim Hollen is the owner and President of RICH LTD. (www.richltd.com), a 35+ year-old California-based point-of-purchase display, retail store fixture, and merchandising solutions firm which has been named among the Top 50 U.S. POP display companies for 9 consecutive years. A former management consultant with McKinsey & Co. and graduate of Stanford Business School, Jim Hollen has served more than brands and retailers over more than 20 years and has authored nearly 500 blogs and e-Books on a wide range of topics related to POP displays, store fixtures, and retail merchandising.
Jim has been to China more than 50 times and has worked directly with more than 30 factories in Asia across a broad range of material categories, including metal, wood, acrylic, injection molded and vacuum formed plastic, corrugated, glass, LED lighting, digital media player, and more. Jim Hollen also oversees RICH LTD.&#;s domestic manufacturing operation and has experience manufacturing, sourcing, and importing from numerous Asian countries as well as Vietnam and Mexico.
His experience working with brands and retailers spans more than 25 industries such as food and beverage, apparel, consumer electronics, cosmetics/beauty, sporting goods, automotive, pet, gifts and souvenirs, toys, wine and spirits, home improvement, jewelry, eyewear, footwear, consumer products, mass market retail, specialty retail, convenience stores, and numerous other product/retailer categories.
Are you interested in learning more about Pop Display Manufacturers? Contact us today to secure an expert consultation!
Previous: Kitchen Countertop Materials 2024 Ultimate Guide
Next: None
If you are interested in sending in a Guest Blogger Submission,welcome to write for us!
All Comments ( 0 )