The demand for retail wood displays Made in the USA continues to accelerate as a result of international trade tensions, market preferences for more natural displays, favorable economics resulting from North America’s relative natural resource advantage in forest products coupled with low wage inflation in the U.S., and the increasing importance of time to market advantages of domestic production. We expect these underlying forces at work to continue to drive demand along with other considerations such as greater control and market expectations for quality workmanship.
Welcome to Part II of our blog series on retail wood displays made in the USA. We have been exploring some of the benefits of producing wood displays in the U.S. In addition, we have been sharing a wide range of recent examples of wood displays made in our millwork shop in Southern California. In Part I of this series we reviewed 9 examples, including both floor and counter displays. If you missed Part I, you can check it out here. We also mentioned a great resource to see other examples of retail wood displays which draws from 21 of our best blogs on wood displays: The Best of Our Wood Display Blogs- All in One Place. Among the many reasons to consider domestic production, perhaps the most compelling is speed to market. If you want to understand more about the economics that support the time-to-market argument, we would suggest you check out our blog entitled Point of Purchase Displays: How to Get Them for Free.
Now let’s take a look at 8 more recent examples of retail wood displays made in our millwork shop.
1) Dragon Alliance Podium Glorifier– We built the podium glorifier shown below to showcase Dragon Alliance’s line of high-tech performance eyewear. The bottom part of this display was made of MDF and features a locking cabinet with a laser-cut 3D acrylic logo. On top of the podium we built an acrylic case with a stained wood base and designed it so that it could be used independently as a counter display.
2) Case Yard Counter Display– The 2-sided counter hook display shown below is about as simple as it gets and is also very cost effective. We built this out of prefinished China Birch plywood and direct printed branding at the top on both sides. We used pressure-fit black powder coated wire hooks to accommodate the customer’s hanging product.
3) Commando Floor Display– We designed the 2-sided floor display shown below for Commando’s line of raw-cut, no panty line undergarments. We used MDF with a black melamine finish, clear acrylic shelf fronts, and a digitally-printed PVC header sign.
4) Sandal Floor Display– FootBalance was looking for a highly versatile, 2-sided floor display to merchandise its sandals so we recommended customizing our stock WD-2S-TGW display. The display features pre-finished China Birch plywood construction and includes a wire slatgrid center panel. We added PVC side and header signs and provided our stock slatgrid hooks to hang the sandals.
5) Stack Co. Floor Display– The low-profile mobile merchandiser shown below is yet another example of a pre-finished China Birch plywood display. We made this one, as well as a smaller format companion display, for Stack Co.’s new line of patio dollies. Simple in its construction, this display includes a base with casters and direct-printed branding, back panel with support gussets, 4 straight-outs, and a die-cut PVC header sign.
6) Villa Maria Countertop Glorifier– We made this countertop wine display to feature 3 bottles of Villa Maria. We used a stained pine base with laser-engraved front lip branding and recessed holes that we cut on our CNC. We added direct-printed acrylic side and back panel branding.
7) LAPCO Wall– We made the modular and configurable 21-foot wall fixture below to merchandise LAPCO’s line of uniforms. We used slotted metal frames from our stock line of displays and created a wood support structure including vertical MDF support dividers and MDF shelves with some stock metal accessories. We direct printed the PVC back panels and header signs. This is a good example of how wood display components can be used with stock metal components to quickly create a custom merchandising solution.
8) Lubanzi Wine Display– Our final example today is a floor shelf display we built for Lubanzi Wines. This 6-shelf display is constructed of solid pine and pine plywood with a walnut stain. We incorporated a PVC back panel with a direct-printed header as well as side signs.
Thanks for checking out today’s blog and be sure to stay tuned for our third and final series post in which we will cover the last 8 examples.
Jim Hollen is the owner and President of RICH LTD. (www.richltd.com), a 35+ year-old California-based point-of-purchase display, retail store fixture, and merchandising solutions firm which has been named among the Top 50 U.S. POP display companies for 9 consecutive years. A former management consultant with McKinsey & Co. and graduate of Stanford Business School, Jim Hollen has served more than 3000 brands and retailers over more than 20 years and has authored nearly 500 blogs and e-Books on a wide range of topics related to POP displays, store fixtures, and retail merchandising.
Jim has been to China more than 50 times and has worked directly with more than 30 factories in Asia across a broad range of material categories, including metal, wood, acrylic, injection molded and vacuum formed plastic, corrugated, glass, LED lighting, digital media player, and more. Jim Hollen also oversees RICH LTD.’s domestic manufacturing operation and has experience manufacturing, sourcing, and importing from numerous Asian countries as well as Vietnam and Mexico.
His experience working with brands and retailers spans more than 25 industries such as food and beverage, apparel, consumer electronics, cosmetics/beauty, sporting goods, automotive, pet, gifts and souvenirs, toys, wine and spirits, home improvement, jewelry, eyewear, footwear, consumer products, mass market retail, specialty retail, convenience stores, and numerous other product/retailer categories.