Bloomingdale’s, the storied retailer, knew what it was doing in 1898 when it installed the first escalators in a department store. The new technology became a source of curiosity, attracting customers, and also opening up much needed space on multiple floors for merchandise to be displayed. Technology has since been the retailer’s friend in facing the challenges of holding sufficient inventory within a finite space and giving customers a visually stimulating in-store experience.
Right now, as advances in customer-facing point-of-sale (POS) technology converge with increasing logistical sophistication to make omni-channel retailing a reality, retailers are presented with new opportunities to optimize the value of bricks-and-mortar stores. At Lord & Taylor, the proliferation of RFID technology has enabled the sales team to tap on the specialty chain’s entire inventory in order to fulfill the client’s needs. The right color and the right size, if available in any other store, can be ordered, paid for and shipped to her address while she is in the store. This means that less space needs to be devoted to holding inventory and that visual merchandising becomes an increasingly vital tool in creating a compelling shopping experience.
This convergence of retail technology comes in an era where the client’s perception of fashion and consumption is increasingly shaped by the visual richness of social media and digital content. The bricks-and-mortar store must similarly present an environment that leverages on its ability to stimulate all senses. This entails an approach to displaying products that maximizes visual impact while maintaining graphical clarity to tell a story. Such forms of visual merchandising have traditionally been the preserve of first-tier and flagship stores while smaller stores compromise on their visual merchandising capacity to hold inventory. As technology enables individual stores to tap into an entire chain’s inventory, these stores should now make use of the same visual merchandising tools to effectively display their products.
By making inventory readily accessible through e-commerce and improved POS technology, bricks-and-mortar store are increasingly empowered to take advantage of the trend towards ‘showrooming’, where customers physically experience the use of a product and then purchase it online. This calls for a renewed approach to visual merchandising where retailers create a seamless transition of brand messaging through all channels. Visual merchandising can no longer be dismissed as cosmetic and must become a vital component of a retailer’s marketing strategy.