When size matters

Large product displays can lure shoppers and lift sales

Build it and they will come. Or so believe many supermarket retailers, who continue to construct bigger and more impressive product displays than ever in an effort to attract the customer's eye and push large volumes of sale and seasonal items.

You've seen them: The plateaus of plastic Pepsi bottles, boffo banana displays that could pass for parade floats and all of the ascending stacks of endcap edibles in between.

Mega-displays can sometimes appear tacky and egregiously overdone to some, says Milton Merl, president of Milton Merl & Associates, a New York-based designer and manufacturer of custom point-of-purchase fixtures for supermarkets." But whether it's beer stacked to the ceiling next to a display of chips during football season or a summer sale attempting to sell suitcases full of carbonated soda, they serve their purpose," he added.

The best kinds of products for which to build giant displays are highly expandable consumption categories such as beer, pop, snacks and treats, and seasonal fresh fruits, says Merl. Share-shifting items such as paper towels and bar soap also lend themselves well to large displays "if you're trying to steal market share from the retailer across the street rather than grow the volume of the store," Merl says. "These types of products won't be as quickly consumed--they're meant to stack shoppers' cupboards."

Creating large produce displays is also a great technique to promote a strong "fresh" image in your store, according to Kathy Means, vice president of the Produce Marketing Association, Newark, Del. "The goal for the retailer in building these big, stacked displays should always be to move product," she says, "but the more you are able to attract attention and build awareness, the more product you'll sell."

DON'T FORGET THE SIGNS...AND CROSS PROMOTION HELPS

Whatever display you opt for, it should have an entertaining form of advertising or signage attracting shoppers to it, says Joseph Casper, director of corporate communications at the Point of Purchase Advertising Institute, Washington, D.C.

"The key to any display is the sign," says Mike Kowalski, store director for a Wild Oats Market in Hinsdale, Ill. His store prints up special stock signage with product name branding included on each sign.

"The sign has to be clean, clearly show the price and convey simple information," he says. It should also be located in such a place as to command people's attention, Casper adds. "And being able to cross-promote other products to maximize impact is a plus, too. Sharp retailers will put a large Easter candy display near a greeting card area, for example."

Indeed, cross-promotion and seasonal/event awareness can yield healthy sales, as evidenced by jumbo displays that are often built before Superbowl Sunday. "You see that huge Superbowl pop display, and you think of buying chips and dip and throwing a party," Means says.

Sometimes you have to practically give the product away to build store loyalty and create good word of mouth, according to Means, who says the practice is often used at supermarket grand openings, which often feature a few giant product displays. "If you want to get on the evening news or something by constructing this huge display of fruit, you're probably going to buy huge quantities of product, mark down the price and possibly take a loss," she says. "Leftover perishables are often then donated to a local charity."

No matter what the product is, the bottom line on building the perfect display beast is to move product, Merl says. "And that decision to move a lot of volume at a certain loss of profit is usually a marketing decision made independent of the retailer," he adds.

Kowalski says most mass retailers and nationwide chains make deals with manufacturers and distributors that result in large product displays: The chain agrees to reserve prime floor space for the mega-display and run advertisements for the product in sale circulars and via in-store signage in exchange for a negotiated cost.

"That's why you'll often see very the same look at all stores throughout one chain," he says. "At stores like ours, we have more flexibility to work with the community and determine what gets displayed and when. It's all about what the manager believes in selling."

In many cases, the product manufacturer or supplier funds the display setup, which is negotiated between a broker and the store. Merl says: "Building big displays can be very costly for retailers, so they try to save money by using everyone else's people to build it. If they plan on putting Coke on sale, for example, they might try to get Coca-Cola personnel to stack up the display."

FACTORING IN LABOR

The average labor rate in the industry for building and stocking displays ranges between $15 and $20 an hour, depending on the product and type of display built. "A typical endcap display that's 4 feet wide by 3 feet deep by several feet high can cost upwards of $35 to build," he says. "That may not seem like much, but if the average product is making the retailer three cents on the pretax dollar, you'd have to sell at least $1,200 of that displayed product to at least break even on your $35 labor costs."

In addition, you may also need to budget and schedule extra labor for restocking, spot mopping and cleanup, and taking down the display, too, Means says.

Constructing a large display typically involves stacking or alternating interlocking pallets, crates, or stair-step fixtures or special boxes together in a tiered pattern that can support the weight and balance of a stacked product. Any average-sized display can be built using a strong, reliable stacking base and common sense, Merl says. Today, many displays even come pre-stacked on a distribution pallet that can be simply loaded off the truck and right onto the store floor with no assembly required.

At Wild Oats, 90 percent of the floor-stacked product displays are built off a simple 4-by-4 wooden palette draped with a plastic skirt dressing. "In our market, the largest displays are either soda, water or chips, and they sell fast," Kowalski says.

When it comes to building a big display, the trick, Means says, is to make it look fuller than it is, especially when you're showcasing perishables and produce that can't be stocked too deeply.

Not all supermarkets buy into the big display concept, however. Vince Mastromauro, produce manager at a Sunset Foods store in Highland Park, Ill., says his department just doesn't have enough floor space to hold large fresh fruit or vegetable displays.

"I'm a firm believer in displaying a fair amount of space for a seasonal or sale items, but I like to keep the product fresh and not overdo it," he says. "You can lose a lot of your product due to shrink and insufficient rotation when you build a giant floor display."

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