5 Tips to Modernize Your Apparel Merchandising Strategy
Gabrielle Downey
6 Min Read
Anyone in apparel retail knows merchandising is one of the commandments of sales success. However, customers have seen all the tricks in the book. Spring cleaning means it might be time to spruce up your current apparel merchandising approach. From in-store to online, freshening up your marketing and sales tactics take a bit of experimenting. Here are five ideas to think about when reimagining how you merchandise!
1. Leverage The Power of Color
Color affects how consumers feel and hence influences their buying habits. People associate particular meanings to certain colors.
Pick a Central Color
Pay close attention to the main colors featured in your display by researching the effects of color. Bright colors tend to be more eye catching and should used to highlight displays and to grab customers’ attention.
Set The Mood
The color you choose to highlight should convey the overall ambience you are trying to communicate. If you want customers to be soothed and relaxed in your store, you should gravitate towards green and blues, whereas bright reds and oranges generate more buzz and excitement.
When developing your apparel merchandising strategy, know your audience and the lifestyle of the customers you are selling to produce an optimized consumer experience. Assessing the age group you sell to, for example, can help you choose between bolder and subtler colors. Determining color per country and culture context is another great way to tailor color schemes to customers.
Make Relationships Through Color
Color is an easy tool to make associations. Whether it be your brand or your clothing, color can contextualize the style and persona of the apparel. Pick specific colors that consumers will be able to connect to you and your store. Constantly reinvent your color scheme for a memorable presentation and to match the upcoming trends.
2. Organize And Declutter
No one likes coming into a store with clothing that is unkempt and disheveled, and there is nothing more frustrating that racks without any rhyme or reason. Utilize space and storage effectively to best display apparel.
Equip Your Store
Find the right racks, shelves, mannequins, hangers, etc. to craft clean and sharp displays. The clothing should speak for itself, but it needs the space and formation to be able to do so. Uncluttered displays where clothes don’t have to compete for space and attention triumph over densely-packed clothing racks.
Use Tools To Organize Your Space
You can use a tool such as planograms to configure the exact setup of your store and place each item appropriately. This will help decipher the optimal arrangement for a store. It helps illustrates how the layout can be improved to increase traffic and attention.
Coordinate Goods
Account for color in your organizing strategy and develop palettes of different colors to coordinate. Don’t put competing or conflicting colors in the same space. You want your presentation to be minimalist and structured. Consider products, also, that pair well together. This can progress cross-merchandising and sell relational goods together. By thinking through different outfit possibilities and offering combinations, even implicitly, buyers will be attracted to purchasing things together.
Your store is a map guiding potential customers to make a purchase. Make sure customers are able to easily find the products they are looking for and enjoy their shopping experience.
Pave The Way
Design an attractive entry to begin an aesthetic experience from the second someone walks through the door. This will prime customers for the in-store experience.
Be Attentive To Detail
Combine color and lighting techniques to communicate an inviting atmosphere. Don’t overlook something as deceivingly simple as flooring which is the road your customers will navigate through your store.
When setting up displays, consider the ideal pathways for shoppers to lead them to particular trends and items. Put yourself in their shoes to better understand how they maneuver shopping for apparel. Your apparel merchandising scheme should account for the visibility of all products and incorporate helpful signs to point out where items are located.
Translate In-Store Organization Online
If you are working on an e-commerce platform, make sure to have a clear structure on the site with filters, tabs, and other tools to make for a seamless online shopping experience.
Cross Merchandise
Guide consumers online by featuring certain products together such as accessories and shoes with hand-picked outfits. A related items tab is an easy way to achieve this. Cross merchandising enhances the overall experience and provides customers with a visualization of how to make pieces work together.
To develop the best apparel merchandising strategy, you have to know who your consumers. Analyze your data and draft consumer profiles to focus sales.
Determine Your Key Demographics
Take the time to learn the demographics associated with your apparel market. Assess the values, tastes, and lifestyles of your target consumers and devise ways to integrate them into your merchandising. Your market is the key to unlocking the vision of your store or brand. Your vision is the connector between business and customer where values and expectations can align. Buyers determine target marketing and merchandising campaigns.
Monitor Trends
Catering to buyer preferences can be done by monitoring trends and styles from the top fashion houses. Follow top bloggers, designers, creative executives, and models to gain a better idea of what is in and what is out. Being on top of the fashion industry can give you an edge by rolling out displays with coveted products hot off the runway. Being ahead of the fashion curve will keep you ahead of competitors and give you inspiration for killer displays. Your buyers want to see the latest and greatest, so it is important to deliver.
5. Tell a Story With Your Displays
Behind your company is a tale to tell. Express your brand and culture through inventive displays that make people stop and stare.
Be Inspired
Mega fashion retailers like Saks Fifth Avenue and Harrods are known for their over-the-top displays. More like works of art than mannequins wearing clothes, the displays are fashioned to evoke a sense of awe. Look at your favorite fashion retailers for merchandising inspiration.
Pick a Theme
Take note of how high-end retailers capitalize on a particular theme and elevate it. Each display becomes a snapshot of a particular story the retailer wants to tell. When planning out your merchandising strategy, decide on what you want to convey, then formulate an implementation plan. Use textures, fabrics, colors, and props to set the stage.
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Gabrielle Downey
Gabrielle is a Content Marketing Journalist at Repsly with an enthusiasm for creativity and innovation. While pursuing her passion for writing, she is studying economics and philosophy at Boston College. She spends her free time exploring Boston in search of the best cup of coffee and cannoli.
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