Effective retail and e-commerce merchandising weaves a narrative, eliminates shopper confusion, influences consumers to choose your brand and, crucially, converts more visitors into loyal customers. Here are 10 reasons why brands and retailers should prioritize merchandising in 2024:

  1. Curation simplifies purchases. Telling a compelling story about a product collection enables consumers to quickly immerse themselves in your brand, fostering relaxation and encouraging them to purchase your product. An overwhelmed consumer in-store or on your .com doesn’t transition into a customer; they simply leave.
  2. Streamlined inventory management. Defining hero SKUs and top franchises, coupled with financial data, optimizes SKU count and inventory levels.
  3. Efficient capital allocation. Implementing a structured merchandising process and inventory monitoring ensures working capital isn’t unduly tied up, freeing resources for other business investments.
  4. Maximizing margins. A well-established hero product should be cost-optimized for quality and profitability. By consistently featuring it in branded content, you sustain full-price sales and reduce markdowns. For slower-moving SKUs in-store, put them at the back of the store so budget-conscious shoppers pass full-price items first. Similarly, online, mixing sale colors with full-price options creates varied purchasing opportunities.
  5. Ensuring consumer satisfaction. Robust merchandising planning minimizes out-of-stocks, boosts inventory turnover, and satisfies consumers by offering variety in size and color choices.
  6. Encouraging exploration. Compelling merchandising captivates consumers’ attention, driving further exploration and purchase, both in-store and online.
  7. Enhancing collaboration and financial outcomes. Holistic merchandising planning involves cross-team collaboration, fostering a comprehensive view of the business and results in alignment for annual planning.
  8. Customer-centric focus. Analyzing customer behavior, market trends and performance metrics leads to the identification of patterns, opportunities and optimized merchandising to deliver relevant experiences for consumers.
  9. Driving cross-selling and AOV. Helping consumers imagine how to style products can lead to increased purchases and cross-selling opportunities.
  10. Empathy building. Asking consumers to find specific merchandise in-store/online highlights navigation issues, prompting solutions to enhance the consumer journey.

Merchandising blends art and science to prioritize consumer needs and drive growth. It demands a strategic approach, data-driven and creative-led decisions, predictive analysis, and interdepartmental collaboration. For many companies, effective merchandising is the linchpin for scalability and enhanced value creation.

This article was originally published on Culp’s LinkedIn and has been republished with permission.