That story is usually consistent for a season, or a year, or even longer. It may be mix-match, or all-of-a-color, or a single length, or many lengths.
For example, if coordinates are mix-match, you can show your stocks so that tops of one color or texture are above bottoms of a related but not identical color or texture. If it's a plaids-and-plains season, you might alternate a plaid and a harmonizing plain on the stock racks.
If the look is contemporary, and all one color and all one texture, you might reverse your strategy and group all of one color, or fabric, or texture, together.
Or, suppose the season is one of uninhibited color choice. You might arrange the colors in each section of your stock in the most random-seeming sequence you can devise, to convey the message that the customer is right with any color she fancies.
The same principle applies to lengths, textures, and other elements. If you mix all lengths together, your length story is "Anything goes". If you show very long or very short lengths of skirts, or sweaters, or scarves, or other merchandise, all in one section of the stock, you underscore the importance of the particular length you single out for this treatment.
Caution: If you ignore your fashion message and simply arrange your stock in some systematic way (by size, let's say) that makes no fashion point at all, you just may be telling your customer: "This is a warehouse".
The Numerical Factor
By whatever principle you arrange your stock; you have to reckon also with the numerical factor. The more pieces of a style, or color, or length you place on view, the more emphasis you give to the color, or length, or other feature they have in common.
This is a principle recognized and applied by supermarket operators. They have seen that the sales of equivalent brands will vary according to the amount of shelf space assigned to each.
Things aren't quite that cut and dried with fashion merchandise, but the impact of any element of the fashion story is greater when there is a strong representation of merchandise exemplifying that element on the selling floor.
Watch your proportions!
Half-filled racks and bins, perversely enough, do not say to the consumer: "This merchandise was so good we sold out almost everything we had". They say instead: "These are leftovers. They can't be worth looking at".
The Convenience Factor
It's a basic principle of dealing with people (customers and sales people included) that they are most likely to do what you want when you make it convenient for them to do it.
In stock arrangement, if you want your customers to take an interest in certain portions of your stock, or if you want your sales people to push certain items or combinations of items, arrange your stock to make such buying and selling easier.
Assign those areas of your department that are first to be seen and reached to those items you are eager to sell. These may include:
- those with good mark on - a category that may embrace some of your basics and classics
- those styles on which you want to test customer reaction
- items that acquire instant timeliness, like umbrellas on a rainy day
- styles priced above your best selling price lines, yet not so high that a sharp step-up is involved
- items that invite the purchase of related items or that are themselves logical second items for customers to buy
- items that can be sold in multiples.
- A basement hosiery department traded customers up by placing better hosiery on a shelf above (and more convenient than) the one assigned to its meet-the-price-competition line.
- A supermarket sold more two-pound tins of coffee by placing them on a convenient shelf height than the singles where customers had to stoop for them.
- An Infants' Department couldn't sell extra bottoms for baby sleepers until it placed them on a shelf immediately above the one holding the complete sleeper sets.
- A corset buyer encouraged multiple sales of bras and girdles by putting two or three colors of a style in each stock box, so that salespeople automatically showed the color range each time they showed a style. The same buyer discouraged the sale of cheaper numbers by stocking them in floor-level drawers.
Your best efforts to plan feature displays and effective stock arrangements can be nullified by poor housekeeping anywhere in your department - carelessly hung or folded merchandise, dusty displays, fitting rooms that look as if the cleaners forgot them. Inspection is essential if housekeeping levels in your department are to remain high. Make the rounds personally when you can, and require your assistants to inspect and correct regularly.
Reaping the Benefits
Good stock arrangement tells your fashion story clearly. It simplifies selling for your sales people. If your stock is arranged with some thought to fashion demand, you will be able to see almost at a glance whether or not your forward stocks are balanced in terms of that demand.
