Merchandising as Marketing

Believe it or not merchandising is a key component in increasing retail revenues. Costco has mastered this concept and quite literally turned it into a science experiment. It's not a coincidence that the toilet paper and bottled water are all the way in the back. Think for a second and try to remember the last time you walked into our favorite warehouse store. Was everything in the same place you remember it being in months earlier? If it was I would be utterly shocked.

You are quite literally a lab rat when you walk into a Costco, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. It's really a testimony to their genius. Items are strategically placed through out the warehouse to determine the ideal spot for the highest inventory turn rate. Just for fun, next week reorganize your store. Knock the dust off of those slow movers in the back corner of the store and move them next to your best seller. I've used this tactic before myself when I was running my parts department in our retail boutique.

I would literally have people ask me when I had gotten things in that they've been looking for all this time. Never mind that the same item had been there the whole time fifteen feet away on the

opposite wall! By occasionally rearranging your plan-o-gram it forces your customers to look for items in a different location. Meanwhile they are passing by items they may not have know that you even stocked. Not to mention it will get rid of all the dust bunnies hiding behind slow moving inventory. No one likes to pick an item up and have to blow an inch of dust off it.

I hope you get some great ideas from these photos taken of the retail parts boutique at the dealership I worked at after our remodel. I remember the late hours our team put in to get everything just right for our grand re-opening. My heartfelt thanks go out to my old team: Pete Brewer, friend and mentor; Bob Learned, analytical dynamo; Anthony Delgado, parts runner extraordinaire.