Are you thinking of opening a retail store? Do you feel that your sales could do better? Competition within the fashion industry has always been fierce, even before the dawn of the digital age. However, today, brick-and-mortar retailers don’t just compete with each other anymore but with the hundreds (if not thousands) of online stores.

It is therefore essential for anyone who wants to thrive within the industry to enter it with a sound strategy in mind. We are going to cover one of those strategies in this article: the retail planogram.

What Is a Retail Planogram?

In a nutshell, a retail planogram is a visual layout of how objects are going to be displayed in a store environment. It allows retail owners to plan the most strategic display and positioning of their products not just to maximize sales but to improve customer experience.

Retail planogram principles can be applied to any type of establishment: from supermarkets to hardware shops, from bookstores to fashion boutiques.

Benefits of Planograms

Planogramming is truly an essential part of running a retail store. In fact, it remains one of the top merchandising tips we share with beginner retailers. Those who are planning to create planograms for their retail fashion shop will be pleased to learn that it offers both short-term and long-term benefits.

The most immediate reward is the significant increase in sales due to better sales allocation and a deeper understanding of product performance.

Meanwhile, long-term benefits include maximized selling potential of your retail space and improved stock variety and inventory management. After all, planogramming makes it easy to see what products need to be replenished and which ones need a little bit more effort to sell.

Why Retail Planogram Is Important for Fashion Store

Here are just some of the reasons why optimizing one’s planogram is essential when running a retail fashion store:

It increases your shop’s visual appeal. To increase a person’s visual appeal is the fashion industry’s most enduring promise. Hence, it is only expected for a retail fashion store to look its best.

Just think about it: who would buy from a brand that can’t even make itself look presentable? Not you, and certainly not your target demographic.

A retail planogram can help you organize your pieces according to their color, collection, or any category that will make them look the most impressive.

It highlights your brand’s unique personality. Each fashion brand has its own story. You can usually find it in the invisible thread that unifies the complementing styles of each piece.

Having a planogram plotted will help translate your story and let it resonate with your audience.

For instance, someone who sells activewear might want to display their most popular exercise clothing at the forefront. They know how hectic the life of their customers can get, so the last thing they want to do is to waste their time.

Those who are looking for footwear, on the other hand, have more time to browse, so a retail owner can display it farther within the store. It will also lead their clients closer to where the store personnel usually are. This will make them feel more welcome and taken care of.

Aside from that, It will also subtly translate as a message for one to take their time and help is within reach when needed. This type of layout, thus, tells the story of efficiency and value for customers.

Now ask yourself, what is your brand’s story, and how can you translate it through planogramming?

It helps sell multiple items at a time. Finally, strategic retail planograms that display complementary items together can gently remind buyers of other things they might want to purchase as well.

Going back to our previous example, wouldn’t it be logical to display socks near footwear? How about shoelaces and similar accessories? Doing so will definitely help you upsell each sale.

Product and Category Performance Measurement

It is crucial for fashion retailers to understand the performance of their products. Which pieces are running low on sizes? What categories are constantly out-of-stock? More importantly, how are you going to manage your available shelf space?

Planogramming will give you more insight into how products and categories flow through your retail space.

It is now up to you to decide how to use the available information. Are you going to devote your prime spots to help low-performing products get noticed? Or would you rather allocate more space to your bestsellers?

Excess Inventory

While a fashion retail store should stay true to the brand’s style, this is no reason for your store to lack the variety needed to accommodate as much of your target demographic as possible. People have different tastes, after all.

Too much of a certain product or category can lead to dead stock and loss in revenue. It will keep your capital held up in goods instead of growing in revenue brought about by the constant flow of inventory acquisition and sales.

Assortment planning combined with a strategic visual merchandising planogram can prevent that from happening. That’s because planogramming can help you objectively determine the right level of product variety while preventing the excessive acquisition of certain goods in the process.

Centralization

Brand awareness is a huge driving factor to a fashion retail shop’s success. However, this requires a level of consistency that can be difficult to maintain especially if your brand has several stores.

Fortunately, planogramming holds to key towards a more centralized approach to sales. As mentioned above, it can highlight the elements that set your brand apart from all the other fashion boutiques out there.

Conclusion

The benefits of implementing a planogram for retail stores are impressive. This is especially true for fashion retail stores that need to manage a wide variety of products, variants, and collections. Not only will it provide organization and visual appeal, but planogramming also gives store owners the opportunity to learn more about their business in general. This includes their customer’s buying habits and tastes as well as the performance of their products and categories.

About Author

Mike Austin is a marketing and creative content specialist at Adrack.com and working in the Digital Marketing industry since 2009. As a conversion-driven marketer, he is passionate about helping businesses expand their online visibility and reach their goals.