The question confronting every retailer is what encourages a customer to shop in one store rather than another ?
The answer is: a coordinated effort that includes marketing, merchandising, store design and visual merchandising.
Visual merchandising today has become an indispensable and integral component of the fashion business. it is a tool or language that retailers use to communicate with the target customers. Visual merchandising makes the customers stop, look, even examine the new merchandise available in your store. It is the art of presentation, which puts the merchandise in focus. It educates the customer, create desire and finally augments the selling process.
In jewellery and fashion business, VM plays a very important role. If you are running a jewellery business, boutique, design house or a store, it is mandatory for you to learn the basics of VM to enhance the sale of your merchandise.
The basic rules of design |
As you know, humans require beauty in addition to function. Our mind is consciously and unconsciously looks for it. So, here are the two things you need to keep in mind when designing a new display.
1- Keep it simple (A busy window display doesn’t say a lot. Less busy displays say more).
2- Use graceful lines, pleasing colours, contrast, interesting patterns and appealing arranged merchandise.
Together with contrast this will help create rythm.
Reduce confusion in your Design: Unless there’s a clear theme or topic, organize the objects by:
Color, Texture, Use, Lifestyle or any other common feature.
Beauty in composition: Sometimes the idea you want to showcase involoves a theme or topic. When that’s the case, you should keep in mind that you shouldn’t try to replicate a real situation.When creating store windows you should strive to create impressions. You can’t replicate something like a swimming pool or the beach. That would be overkill. You need to extract the beautiful lines, colours & forms and perhaps some appropriate display symbols. When you use an object again & again and it establishes a pattern, you get harmony and focus.
Generally, the large items are the focal points and are the featured merchandise. The smaller surrounding items should support the large items. These items may be products like accessories or props.
Colour themes: Colour is the first thing a customer notices. The most exciting displays are dominated by one colour.
The next obvious question is how do you decide what colour to use?
The dominant colour in your merchandise usually determines the colour in the display. Colour also establishes a mood like happiness. In addition, the customer identifies colour with price, quality & style. Its important to know that too many colours in equal amounts confuse the customer and weaken the presentation. Its ok to showcase lots of products of all shapes and sizes in a store window, but shouldn’t look like a big mess. The way to deal with a big mess is to quit your idea of too much colour. That’s when the beauty of minimalism comes alive.
Tip: If red earrings are hot, dress as many of the mannequins as possible with red earrings. Enhance the earrings with red belts or shoes and this will strengthen the colour theme. Don’t worry about using too much of the same colour.
Lines: You can use lines to connect shapes or objects so the eye follows one object to another. or you can use imaginary lines to accomplish this.
There are various kinds of lines: straight, crooked and curved.
Vertical lines create impressions of strength, permanence and stability. Horizontal lines create feelings of dignity, calm and order. Diagonal lines create attention. Curved lines are ideal to confine the contours of objects or to create an endless motion like a wave. Crooked lines are everchanging.
Focus on Usage/Function: Create a scene showing how the products can be used. Mannequins are perfect for this. For example, you can show them while they are at the beach or while they are playing in the snow or having fun in the kitchen.
Focus on Lifestyle: Your products enhance someone’s lifestyle. If that lifestyle matches your store’s brand then try to find objects that go hand in hand with that lifestyle and use them in your window display. This will turn your window into a magnet for anyone who associates him or herself with that lifestyle.
Nature: You can find everything in nature-love, grand openings, drama, elegance. Use the beauty of flowers, the darkness of forests, the rich colour of butterfly wings etc.
Fairytales, fiction and dreams: Position your products in a fairytale window and tell a story. Think about the little mermaid and the sea witch, a circus act or a magic trick.
Celebrities and photos: Talk to your vendors, ask for some big photos or posters and special displays that you can place in your window displays. Try not to give up your creative control, because in the end, its your store, its your brand.
Best of luck!