Wilkinson’s Animated Store Briefing Packs

Retail Communications for the new Home Living Range

Late last year, as part of an ongoing program of modernization, Wilkinson opened four new stores sporting their new company branding. Earlier this year they commissioned Fifth Dimension to help them with another initiative; the launch of their new Home Living range, which they had re-branded with a more modern design. To implement the new range they had also developed new display equipment that included a bed, curtain displays, carpet plinths etc., all of which would be new to the store staff.

Wilkinson trialled the displays in a number of stores, using a dedicated team to carefully implement the new equipment and layouts, in each test store, to a very high standard. Early results were favorable, so to ensure a successful roll-out to the remaining stores, Wilkinson asked Fifth Dimension to develop highly visual Store Briefing Packs to show the store staff how to implement the new range most effectively. The goal was to achieve the highest standards of compliance with the guidelines and so create the best possible presentation of the new range, consistently, in all stores.

Wilkinson’s Virtual Store

First, we built a Wilkinson Virtual Store focused on the re-branded category. From this Virtual Store we created an overview movie that introduced the new Home Living concept and what it was going to do for Wilkinson and for their customers. We then created detailed animations showing how to implement the new equipment, how to “dress” the product on each type of fixture and how to maintain the display each day.

The Briefing Packs were published as a DVD, which was presented to all store managers at their conference in April. Using this approach, Wilkinson achieved a greater sense of unity among the store managers, who returned to their stores after the conference highly motivated to achieve the company’s goal. Each manager received copies of the DVD Briefing Pack and used the presentations to train their local staff.

The image shows the new ‘Home Living’ Lighting Department rendered from the Virtual Store, built by Fifth Dimension, from which the Store Briefing Packs were created

This note from Wilkinson’s Richard Biggin described their success;

‘ ….. I wanted to say a big thanks and congratulations to you and your team for the Wilkinson Home Living DVD and training guide.

To produce such a high quality and inspiring piece of work on such short timelines was absolutely outstanding. The team and I have been extremely impressed with you and your team’s professionalism, rigor, attention to detail and commitment to deadlines. This made you very easy to work with and enabled our companies to very quickly create a strong working relationship.

The DVD was a real hit during the 4 retail staff training days we had at head office - we used the overview in the introductory session and used the fixture training videos as part of the practical training sessions during the day. The content really added to the delivery of the day and I am looking forward to hearing how the materials helped the training process in store, where I hope they will make a massive difference.

The overview DVD has proved a big hit with other head office managers and the senior managers in the business. We have shown the DVD at our key trading meeting and at the Executive Management Team meeting (which includes our CEO). One of our HR officers called it the most inspirational piece she had seen in her 17 years in the business!

I believe that together we have demonstrated the real value of investing in retail training and engagement and may have now created a new benchmark for how we launch major new initiatives in Wilkinson.

So thank you once again for all your efforts and well done on an outstanding piece of work….. ‘

Regards,

Richard
Richard Biggin
Commercial Planning
Wilkinson

Wilkinson is a UK high street discount retailer operating over 300 stores, each averaging about 17,000 sq.ft. in size, from Newcastle to the South Coast. They offer a broad range of items in Bathroom products,Cleaning, Homewares, Kitchen, Confectionery, Clothing , Textiles, Stationery, DIY and Pet Care categories and in some of the larger stores ‘Food to Go’ and Grocery. Wilkinson’s approach is to sell at low prices and to concentrate on increasing the basket’s value, both to it and to the customer.

More images from this project can be seen on our Multimedia blog

Tagged as: Fifth Dimension, Retail Communications, Store Briefing Packs, Store Compliance, Virtual Store, Virtual Stores, Visual Merchandising