Adapting Retail Displays to Real-Time Demand
On another store visit, my wife and I stepped into a fashion store and she immediately saw a jacket that appealed to her right by the door. An assistant, soon to be tagged as the store manager said to my wife that design is selling like hot cakes. My wife took two sizes to the fitting room to try them on. I observed the fixture they came from and the colour blocking was not what I would have expected. I thought it was a tactic to play down how many of the other colours in the style were not selling. A big block of the lime green colour would have advertised that. In fact, the styles were different, one zipped all the way down, one only zipped part way. It would be more cumbersome to put on and take off. Because the stock of the pink one had sold so well, they decided not to put one in the window, or maybe they had taken it out some time ago, to keep the maximum number of sizes on the fixture. And as I stood chatting another lady came in, picked up the same colour and walked round the store with it.
The moral of the store, there are times when breaking the rules is the right way to go. No point in having the bestseller in the window if it is going to sell out very soon. That last one in the window might end up being marked down later on. Also, if the colour blocking implies one style not selling, when it is two different styles, splitting the stack is OK!
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Posted by Brian Hume
16th May 2025
