Ask the Experts : Visual Merchandising Insights
While the visual merchandising industry has always been working in a dynamic environment, these days present some great challenges never seen over the past 80 years. We thought our partners and others in the industry would like to hear from peer industry experts. So we reached out to Eleanor Smith and Jeremy Taylor, with a combined experience of over 50 years, for their observations and advice.
Eleanor Smith
A Passionate leader as a VP of Visual Merchandising for a leading luxury department store, Bloomingdale’s, for over 25 years who believes in the customer’s journey. Creating memorable experiential experiences that inspires Fashion, store animation and top- notch merchandise presentations has been my passion and strategy.
I strongly believe the environment and the implementation of the 5 senses (Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste, Touch and now Safety….) plays a crucial role in how the customer feels, it’s the first impression where the journey begins.
Jeremy Taylor
Jeremy Taylor is a veteran of the retail industry. For two decades, he has created outstanding customer experiences at retailers including KAY, JARED & ZALES. He has also worked with iconic luxury brands including VERA WANG, NEIL LANE & LE VIAN.
With a background firmly rooted in the visual merchandising industry, Jeremy’s talents also include creative direction and project management. For the last five years, he has been a Creative & Visual Merchandising Director for Signet Jewelers operating approximately 3200 stores across North America.
How do you see COVID-19 altering the Visual Merchandising landscape over the next 12 - 24 months?
Eleanor
It's absolutely important to stay relevant and focussed on trends of the business by showcasing them front and forward. The customer must be inspired when they enter the store, coupled with an easy, safe and clear path to experience the brand through their visit. Associates must be educated on top trends to be able to guide the customer for ease of shopping experience. it's no longer about staying a while it's now about here's what new, here's where you find it and here's how you style it, that's done with mannequins and sales teams.
Brick and mortar stores need to implement the spaces and make them less overwhelming, go smaller and create a simple traffic flow to be able to find the product easily. We have to keep the product fresh and updated or else the customer will go elsewhere, like online.... E-commerce is much more important today and that needs to be aligned with in store.
Stores have to be more creative with how they are engaging the customer, inspiration, story telling, callout newness, since new shipments are far less then before, etc.
Jeremy
At least until there is a vaccine, retailers will need to reverse conventional wisdom and focus on ways to limit dwell time in order to ensure social distancing.
Finding ways for customers to find what they need faster (potentially by carefully leveraging technology) is important. For example, can a customer shop on the app first and then find the product in store quickly? Customer mindsets are likely changed for the long-term.
Even once COVID-19 is brought under control, I would expect customers will still demand exceptionally clean spaces and as few touchpoints as possible in the shopping journey. Society is simply more educated about the spread of germs now, and will have higher health standards at least over that 2 year period. That could mean retailers have to rethink interactive visual displays where touch is a necessity. Pivoting to touchless capabilities will be improve the shopping experience.
Also furthering touchless checkout options either via paying by app or through technology such as that used at Amazon Go stores will help foster a more sanitized in-store experience.
In your opinion, where do retailers (as well as brands) need to focus and invest, to be successful for years to come?
Eleanor
They need to invest in pushing BOSS, BOPS locations front and forward, it's all about serving the customer easily, safely and to make it simple. This needs to move faster.
Safety first will still remain relevant even if there is a vaccine for Covid especially in the next few years. need to implement the new normal exercises in the shopping experience.
Also, I believe there will be less malls in the future, less saturation, and also the relevancy of the lifestyle mall will take into a greater need since outside experience feels safer. Smaller footprints with less space seems most effective in the near future.
Jeremy
In spite of COVID and the complications surrounding that, it’s still going to be all about immersive experiences and being digital first.
Leaning in heavily on social media content in particular should be a key focus to reach customers and capture their attention with great content.
Customers demand a seamless multi-channel shopping experience. For example, if I click on a shoe store’s ad on Instagram and it takes me to their website, I expect to be able to shop for inventory both online as well as in my local store. If I can’t figure out which inventory the site is displaying, I lose interest and move on. Retailers have to connect all of their channels together to support one another in reaching customers at all stages of the funnel.
Given the fact we are in the midst of a global pandemic, how do you suggest retailers (both corporate and in-store) best communicate & execute during such a strange time?
Eleanor
Contactless collaboration is important, a very present effort towards cleanliness is very important, hand sanitizers at every touchpoint, escalators, elevators, restrooms, etc.
Food stores have this mostly covered but retailers are not focussed on this, we have to bring people back to the malls and the malls need to make people feel safe and have better guidelines for the stores, this does not seem to be happening or evident. This is a huge opportunity.
Malls feels like ghost towns and that doesn't make people feel good or want to shop. They need to work harder to gain the customer back.
Jeremy
Since the start of the pandemic, I’ve seen some fairly inventive methods for keeping in touch with customers. One example is setting up a sort of “concierge” service where customers schedule consultations with sales specialists to meet via Zoom. This keeps the retailer in the customer’s purview, promotes brand equity and should help to reassure customers that the retailer is making every effort to make the shopping experience as normal as possible under the circumstances. Brands that do this well will be remembered for their commitment well after the pandemic is a thing of the past.
Since travel is so limited, in-store visual merchandising teams will have to be more self-reliant than ever to execute great in-store experiences for customers. In order to ensure the right messages are making their way down to the store level, now is a great time for retailers to invest in SaaS that captures in-store execution and compliance verification. Photo sharing services like Vistasuite should help give support centers the peace of mind in knowing the brand vision is being carried out to expectations and adequate feedback is received to discover challenges early and make corrections.
What advice would you give to those looking to start their career in Visual Merchandising?
Eleanor
For those seeking careers in Visual merchandising, be more equipped with technical skills, go E-commerce, it's a relevant way of staying in the moment and moving forward, creative merchandising can play a role here as well, the creative skills can be projected in 2D and 3D concepts.
Also, broader scope and flexibility of skill set is extremely important, operational and logistics as well as fashion is necessary today since roles are combining, due to less staffing needs.
Jeremy
Know your customer. Everything we do should be with the customer in mind.
Be prepared to start at the entry level. Take the opportunity to learn the brand from the bottom up, and expect a lot of long, odd hours. Don’t take shortcuts. You will find your early learning to be invaluable as you climb the ladder.
Make an effort to experience a broad cross-section of product categories in order to understand visual merchandising from a variety of perspectives. The basic principles apply, but the execution is dramatically different if you’re selling groceries as opposed to fine jewelry.
Network, network, network. And when you’re done networking, take some additional time to network! Finding that next great opportunity may not be on Indeed. The people you engage with in your network will remember your accomplishments and are more likely to help you in your career path if you stay visible. There are several ways to do this.
Be active on social media especially LinkedIn. Absorb as much information about the industry as possible, and share articles to your network. Pose questions that demonstrate you are knowledgeable about the industry and are always learning.
Document your accomplishments thoroughly and never take them for granted. A project you work on that might seem unimportant at the time could end up being your star story in that next interview.
Build a portfolio site to highlight your work. There are so many free sites like WIX where you can build out professional looking portfolios without having to know HTML. You’ve put in the effort, now wrap it up in a neat package to show potential employers!
Love the industry! If shopping is a task to you and not a pleasure, visual merchandising may not be the right industry.
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