Knowing what materials to use in designing your next retail display stand can make the difference between creating a good display and a great display. Good displays can generate average results, but great displays can create significant sales lift and guarantee a strong return on your display investment. As we have discussed in previous blogs, the name of the game with retail displays is to stand out from the crowd. It is far easier to create a display made out of a single material like wire, wood, acrylic, or corrugated. Because it is easier, a lot of companies go for displays made out of single materials. However, since that is what most of your competitors are doing, you might want to consider a strategy whereby you are incorporating multiple materials into your display.
Multi-material retail display stands are undoubtedly more complex to execute, but they tend to add greater interest and sophistication to a merchandising solution. A lot of POP companies struggle with multi-material displays because they tend to be good at one thing such as metal or acrylic and lack the capabilities to manufacture using other materials. They typically outsource the production of those materials that are outside of their core competence, which can often result in higher costs, longer lead times, and even quality issues. If you are considering a display that uses multiple materials, be sure you are working with a POP display company that has a proven track record at creating multi-material displays.
Let’s take a look at just a few examples of how multi-material displays add interest and sophistication to a merchandising solution. Our first example is a display we created for Fein Power tools which was rolled out in over 1000 Home Depot Stores. The primary material used in the display was corrugated, but we added a vacuum form top which was used to create a higher finished look to display our customer’s power tool product. We also added a rubber pad which was glued to the vacuum formed top. The combination of materials created far more interest compared to a display that we could have made of 100% corrugated material.
A second example is the front end merchandising display shown below that we designed using a wide range of materials. We built the display using a metal tube frame, metal shelves, metal fencing, MDF pegboard panels, bamboo base boards and accent panels, 3-D acrylic letters, a fabric awning, a large digital media player and LED lighting. This fixture creates far more interest than the generic metal fixtures typically seen at checkout.
Finally, we created the multi-material sunglass floor display shown below for 9Five. The main material we used was MDF with a black melamine finish. We added a locking acrylic case, an LED back panel and LED header lighting, as well as a real joy stick, video buttons, coin slots and a lock. Our goal was to create a sunglass display that looked like a video arcade/gaming station since our customer’s target market was males in their teens and early twenties. We could not have accomplished this without the use of multiple materials.
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.