Visual Merchandisers Need New Planogramming Software
This past two years we’ve seen traditional planogramming systems come under heavy scrutiny. These older systems were originally marketed, in the main, by data companies. This background, coupled with pressure from particularly influential clients, led to applications which were primarily optimised for analytics and overburdened with extensive but little used functionality. The net effect was software which was hard to learn and difficult to use. Today, clients have new requirements, which these older systems have difficulty in fulfilling.
In our detailed surveys of both manufacturers and retailers, it emerged that they want a new generation of [...]
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Last week saw the expansion of Marks and Spencer’s Mobile ‘Food To Go’ service in Milton Keynes. It seems that the ‘new’ service has been run in pilot mode for some time in Milton Keynes and in Swindon with two mobile units in each town. According to our local man there are to be two more units regularly servicing MK offices and another sixty across the country by the end of this year. Our two M&S associates say that the service has been an ‘instant’ hit. The most popular purchase being fruit. They also carry more exotic items such as sushi, which is also very popular. What a great idea! It brings the all the convenience and quality of their packaged lunch foods right to the doorstep of your offices.
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Earlier this year Wilkinson commissioned Fifth Dimension to help them with 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.
To ensure a successful roll-out to the stores, Wilkinson asked Fifth Dimension to create 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.
We first created a Virtual Store from which 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. [... ]
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Manufacturers can test Product Positioning in Virtual Retail Environments
The advent of the ‘Virtual’ Store has revolutionized the pre-testing possibilities of store layout and merchandising. With the use of sophisticated computer graphics, it is possible to create any retail environment, such as a supermarket, convenience store or petrol station. And by employing highly developed, but easy-to-use, software, consumers are able to ’shop’ the Virtual Store as they would their local store.
It is possible to replicate the current store layout and see how consumers ’shop’ it in terms of their movements round the store; the products they look at on shelf (browsing); [...]
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Procter and Gamble asked us to create a new kind of Visual Merchandising tool. Codenamed ‘Mary Shelf’, the first of a new generation of Visual Merchandising software was designed and delivered by one of our top Rapid Application Development teams in May 2003, after a very challenging five month development and QA effort. At the time, P and G owned global software licenses for all the first generation shelf planning planogram tools i.e. InterCept, ProSpace, Apollo, Spaceman etc., so it seemed strange to us that they would want to build another one.
They felt that the previous generation of software had not kept pace with the more sophisticated needs of today’s visual merchandisers and that it was not capable of realistically representing new merchandising concepts, point-of-sale graphics, shelf edge labels, innovative header boards etc at the highest level of photo-realism they thought was possible. So they hired us to build it for them. [...]
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An article written by Liz Hamsen which was published by The Grocer in September 2005.
When you picture perfection, what do you see? Brad Pitt? Angelina Jolie? Bradwell Co-op? Unlike the majority of the population who plump for the Hollywood stars when asked to name images of perfection, United Co-operatives and Unilever UK Foods have rather a different ideal. And the Bradwell store in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire is it.
At the moment, Perfect Store, as the project is known, exists only in the virtual world, but the plan is to translate it into reality at Bradwell. The store has been the subject [...]
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Look out for a new series of articles on how Aisle Management is evolving from the well established principles of Catgory Management.
In the series we’ll look at how the new approach is changing the relationship between brand manufacturers and retailers, and how they will work together in the future. We’ll discuss it’s role in Shopper Marketing in Retail and what it will take to be a leader.
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