We often have customers who have broad product lines and are searching for POP displays to merchandise each of their individual lines. In many cases they seek a portfolio of displays so as to be able to present retailers with a comprehensive solution or a menu-driven point-of-purchase program that allows retailers to pick and chose the products and displays they want. In today’s blog we will highlight a few important points to keep in mind when creating a family or collection of displays, and we’ll review a recent display collection we created for one of our customers.
First, let’s discuss 3 key points to keep in mind when developing a collection of POP displays for a set of related products:
- Visual Similarity– In creating a collection of displays, we always suggest making it look like a family. This can be achieved by using the same or similar materials, colors, art work, style, etc. As with a regular human family, it is ok to give each display its own distinctive flair, but it should be pretty easy for anyone to recognize that the displays are part of the same family.
- Thematic Branding– Thematic branding refers to the establishment of a common brand or set of related brands that may or may not fall under a single brand umbrella. What is important here is that you try to leverage your branding across the entire collection of displays. You want each display to carry its weight in reinforcing your brand to the consumer. This is not always possible, but helping the consumer understand that an individual brand is a part of a larger family of brands can often help to build credibility for your brand in the consumer’s mind.
- Uniform Display Quality- It’s important to keep the quality of displays within the same range across the collection. Try to keep all of the displays in the collection high-end, or mid-range or lower-end. This will help avoid confusion on the part of the consumer. Having three really nice, well branded permanent POP displays and then a trashy, poorly constructed corrugated dump bin bearing the same brand name will only serve to raise questions in a consumer’s mind about the quality of your brand.
Now let’s take a look at a recent collection of displays we created for SBR Sports. Our challenge was to create a collection of displays to merchandise an emerging line of personal care products targeting triathletes. The first display we created was a simple but elegant counter display for DERMASPORT, the company’s skin care line. We created a clean acrylic base with CNC routed circles for the bottles, and added a removable PVC header that promoted the brand and help to educate the customer. The display was cost-effective, simple, and attractive. It was designed to ship flat which helped to save on freight.
The second display we designed was also a counter display designed for a lubrication product called TRISLIDE which helps triathletes and surfers reduce chafing. This was a simple 2-tiered PVC display with a die-cut graphic back panel and front shelf graphics. It is slightly lower end than the DERMASPORT acrylic display, but the clean white look helped to establish it as being part of the same family of displays.
The third display we designed was for TRISWIM hair care products. The display was very similar to the DERMASPORT skin care display. It was constructed of white acrylic with product cutouts and had a similar graphic back panel with its own product branding.
Finally, we created the wood floor display shown below to enable SBR Sports to showcase its entire product line on a single 5-shelf floor display. Each shelf had its own individual branding by product line and the back header provided an opportunity for umbrella branding of the SBR Sports brand. We also added side lifestyle and informational graphics. We kept the clean white theme by white washing the wood used to construct the display.
The SBR Sports collection of displays provides retailers with lots of choices and flexibility while also creating a solid image for the overall brand and individual product brands.
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.