Free-standing display tables help bring products to customers

Are your wine and wine gift displays reaching your customers?  I’ve written about merchandise displays in past posts, but this time I mean it in the literal sense.  Are your displays near where your customers stand?  Or do your customers have to walk to your displays?  In this article I’ll talk about how the placement of free-standing display tables positioned throughout a winery can help encourage customer spending.

A couple of weeks ago I visited a winery that had a very large and spacious tasting room.  The tasting bar was positioned within the center of the space while gift display shelving lined all four walls of the room.  While I enjoyed my comfortable wine-tasting experience, nothing within the display units was close enough to catch my attention and make me want to walk over and browse the shelves.  What if, I thought, the winery owner moved some of these gifts away from the walls and out onto free-standing tables closer to the tasting area? 

Bob Radcliffe Jr., President of Display Dynamics, Inc., in his merchandising presentation, Merchandising 101: Anecdotes & Methodology, claims that “Point-of-Purchase [a place where sales are made] is the most critical component of any successful marketing campaign because it exists at the point of ‘convergence.’  At no other instance are people, products, $$ in the same place.”  Radcliffe highlights the retail giant Gap as a good example of a retailer that understands POP merchandising.  “Gap Stores’ trademark is to initiate contact between shopper and goods.  That merchandising policy dictates that the displays are wide, flat tabletops; not racks and shelves.” 

When I think about my experiences shopping at Gap, I know I gravitate to this store because of how easy the designers make it for me to purchase the retailer’s products.  As soon as I walk in the shop, the clothing items are right there in front of me to look at, pick up, and examine prices.  And when think I am done looking and ready to try on items, there are always more display tables with more merchandise to grab as I walk to the back of the store to the dressing room area.

So how would a winery owner decide what kind of free-standing tables to use and where to place them?  Before making any merchandising decisions, Radcliffe suggests observing the flow of traffic.  Try spending some time in one place and taking note of what you see.  How do people move?  How are people reacting to your displays?  As a winery owner, I would suggest also thinking about what image you are trying to convey at your winery.  What look would compliment your wines and wine products?  A couple of antique-looking tables?  A few modern pieces?  Once you have purchased one or two tables, experiment by putting them in different locations with different displays.  You may have to try a few different ideas to get your display tables working for you, but I bet you’ll learn a lot and have a lot of fun in the process!

What do you think?  We would love to hear your thoughts in the Comments section above.  Have a question or comment you would like to send me, Kelly Richards, directly?  Please email me at info@wineryprofitability.com.