Speaker 1: Hi friends, welcome to my channel and in today's video we will learn and understand what are the 5 important elements of visual merchandising. Visual merchandising is the art and technique of displaying the merchandise in an attractive manner so that it will entice the customer to purchase it. This will help in increasing the sales and profitability of the retail store. Most of the people think that visual merchandising is a rocket science, but it is a very creative and satisfying job to be done. Retailers know that visual merchandising is very important in retail, but most of the retailers don't know what it is exactly and how it is to be done. Strong visual merchandising has a big impact on the customer shopping experience in the retail store. So now let us discuss the 5 strategies which will help in achieving the desirable and impactful visual merchandising. Color is the king in visual merchandising. Color is a very strong metric and it will definitely make or break your visual displays. A display can be very good if the colors are coordinated well, or if the colors are not coordinated well then it will create an erratic display. We should always use contrasting colors while displaying the merchandise like black and white, red and green, yellow and purple, blue and orange to create an attractive display. Many times we lose sight in the retail store and the colors have the ability to attract the eyes. Always remember one principle, wherever your eyes go, the feet will follow. So we have to use the colors to catch the eyes of the customer and it will make them to check out the display and the products displayed. The second element of visual merchandising is, always remember to create a focal point. Focal point in visual merchandising is the area to which your eyes are immediately drawn towards the display. Focal points are the hotspots that can increase the sale by 200%. We have to examine the display from the customer's point of view from all the angles. Usually focal points are positioned high so that the customers can see them easily. The focal point of your store is the first thing you want your customers to see when they enter the store. In the retail store, mannequins act as the focal point that draws the attention of the customers. Customers should always see the clothes on the mannequins and not the actual mannequins. So here the merchandise is the focal point. So if you want to know what are mannequins then I have made a separate video for that, link will be given in the description, please check it out. The third element is creating the story in the display. Always communicate to the customer that what is there for them in the store. It has to be a non-verbal communication through visual merchandising. One should always use the powerful and sales enabling signage to show the advantages of buying the product. The signage should always focus on explaining the benefits of the product and it should tell how the product will be useful for them rather than communicating the price through the signage. However, this has to be done in brief by communicating the price proposition. By creating the story or a theme, we are helping the customer to understand the product and help them in their buying decision. The classic example is that of lifestyle graphics. These are very popular and useful in telling the story. Here the image will speak or communicate more than the words. The fourth element in visual merchandising is to expose the maximum merchandise to the customers. This sentence means that we have to display a maximum number of options to the customers without compromising on the display standards. The display should be well designed and impactful. The more merchandise the customer sees, they are more likely to buy them. Consider the loop layout store which is used by many retailers. This kind of layout will expose customers to the maximum number of merchandise. We have to make sure that the display is clean and crisp by having as many displays as possible. The fifth and final element is using of the empty space very wisely. In most of the retail stores, there will be space which will be underutilized. One such example is the space between the merchandise displayed and the ceiling, which can be used for things like signage, which provide information about the products and brands. Also, empty spaces can be used for displaying the lifestyle graphics that will help the customer to associate with your products. The empty space should be utilized properly and it should be used to display the impulse merchandise so that it will help in incremental sales. Also, one can use the empty space by keeping exclusive brand pictures. For example, in apparel stores, small empty spaces can be utilized by keeping perfume counters or jewelry counters. This will help in space utilization and it will also give some revenue to the retail store. So friends, these were the 5 important elements of visual merchandising in retail. If you have liked the video, then please hit the like button and please subscribe to my channel for more such updates. Thanks for watching and see you all soon in my next video.