Corporate Sponsorship is the Key We all like it when someone does us a good turn and likewise we revel in the warm glow when we do a good deed for someone in need of our help. Good deeds are not only within the gift of individuals though since very many large companies feel it’s important to do charitable work or to raise funds to support good causes. For example, major manufacturers in the retail world have done their part for the greater good by supporting the Sport Relief charity in 2010. The money raised by Sport Relief helps fund [...]
Well, it’s been some time since I last settled into writing the first series of articles on this blog. Since then I, and our whole team, have been involved in many new and exciting retail initiatives, encompassing macro and micro space planning optimisation, assortment planning, virtual store research, aisle management and many innovative shopper insights projects all around the world, all of which have added enormously to our experience and breadth of retail knowledge here at Fifth Dimension. Our software development teams have also been busily building new generations of our advanced software for release this coming year, and so [...]
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 [...]
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.
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. [... ]
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. [...]
This article is temporarily unavailable
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.
