Visual Merchandising

Twitter user @travelintweeter sends us this image from inside a major retail brand. The image was take late last week.

If you read retail pundits on Twitter, you'll come to the conclusion that the customer wants two things.

1. An seamless, frictionless omnichannel shopping experience.
2. A fabulous customer experience, fueled by technology.

How about not stuffing a handful of disorganized Hersheys bars in a bin?

How about making sure all the bottles on top of the counter are vertical?

How about processing that red whatever-it-is next to the bottles?

During major events at Nordstrom, I had to work in the stores. Trust me, you don't want Kevin working in one of your stores. Since my skillz (yes, with a "z") were limited, my job was to clean up messes like what you see in the image above. In other words, I'd run that red top back and hang it for returns processing. I'd make sure the presentation of everything in my department was perfect (and this isn't easy work because customers are savages and they'll nuke every perfectly featured display if given the chance).

We've done a good job (as an industry) of paying vendors tens of millions of dollars to execute strategies that aren't moving the needle.

We could spend next-to-nothing to hire a person responsible for making sure that, visually, our merchandise looks spectacular.