Off-price retailers offer high quality products at cheap prices. You will receive a confirmation email shortly. Cross merchandising is when you use complementary displays to cross-promote similar products in a shared category. Just practical, award-winning content sent straight to your inbox. Continue reading below to learn about ways to improve your inventory management and cash flow in order to make your business more successful. Product assortment, sometimes referred to as merchandise mix, refers to the variety of products that a retailer stocks and sells. In this case, it may make sense to start expanding to masks. They also look at size, color, price, SKU, and other characteristics within product categories and segments. One area to look into is your on-site search. In this article, we’ll explain how retail … No matter what direction you go, a modern POS system is essential. It’s about looking at what drives cash flow.”. Drug stores don’t stock a wide variety of products, but have depth in their assortment of health products. Place them at the point-of-purchase, near your top sellers, and in the most-trafficked area of your store. With this in mind, think about a non-traditional format like a Walgreen’s drug store. In addition to a solid inventory management system that makes it easy to track stock levels, add variants, and count your merchandise, consider investing in assortment planning tools that can streamline the process. The first step to having an optimal product assortment is to recognize who you are and what your brand means to your target customers. Let’s get more in-depth with several common retail assortment strategies. Below, we’ll look at the definition of assortment planning, why it’s important, how you can use it, and tools to plan your merchandising strategy. But again, take it one step at a time. He's passionate about helping small businesses reach their potential, and Jeopardy. Staying stagnant is the quickest way to falling behind the competition. Product assortment planning happens by period, whether daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or some other cadence. Companies that utilize these types of assortments also typically will use predictive analytics to assist in their decisions. Your assortment planning should mirror this product hierarchy and guide customers through the process. The home improvement store MyD.IY.ie did just that and found great success. Having a good merchandise mix requires both an art and a science. Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act, Break your inventory down into large categories and smaller sub-categories. Are there brands, product types, or variants that keep showing up? Understand product hierarchy and how customers arrive at the purchase decision, and incorporate that into your assortment planning. Health and safety concerns, lockdowns, and the shift to remote work changed the behaviors and needs of consumers, which resulted in an increased demand for certain products. No ads or product pitches, just solid advice for you to put into action. However, there is a limit to how much differentiation the various retail formats will have from each other. Originally, a product assortment strategy referred only to brick-and-mortar stores. With low staffing levels and a focus on low costs, Family Dollar must consider how to reduce their risk of spoilage. 9 Reasons Your In-Store Retail Displays Aren’t Working — and What to Do Instead... How to Encourage Impulse Buys and Unplanned Purchases in Your Retail Store... 6 Easy Ways To Drive Sales and Engagement Using Your Checkout Counter... optimizing your retail store for the highest conversion rate, Survivor's Guide to the Retail Apocalypse. We will examine the differences in assortment and variety between different types of merchandise retailers below. Discover how Stratagem Cards & Games keeps its store fresh and engaging through community-building and great customer service. Seasonal retailers will have a revolving inventory door and constantly changing catalogs. Open Assessments. That means not same assortment … When planning assortment, retailers consider more than just the product type. As Content Strategist at KORONA, Michael comes from a background in blog writing and content management as well as extensive use of various point of sale systems. Examples of stores that utilize a mass market assortment would be Walmart, Target, Amazon, or Home Depot. Other considerations include: Pretty complex, huh? Retail analytics should be used to simplify and streamline the assortment planning process; this will lead to maximising sales and margins while reducing the time it takes to plan. Keep in mind, every customer is different. These retailers are able to do this because of their scale and sales volume, which reduce costs and risk for the manufacturers.). “It’s so much more than that. Which products do they explore most? A deep understanding of your market and your customers’ shopping habits, combined with sales and inventory data — plus the right tools to boot — will enable you to come up with winning product assortments that drive traffic and sales. Cross merchandise to increase ATV and units per transaction. Leading brands in the Ready-to-Serve segment: SKUs, which can number from single digits to dozens or more.