If you have attended our seminars, or read our articles over the past seventeen years, then you know how important store planning and design is to us. And you know that it makes us crazy when you are given less than credible advice.
Store planning is an art as well as a science; a science that's been around for generations:
1916: Grocery Shopping's Independence Day:
"Few whizzing through life in today's Wal-Mart generation recall those halcyon days when grocery shoppers had to give their orders to some owner's pimply son in a general store who then went about collecting stuff for them behind the counter. But that's the way it worked before Clarence Saunders, a grocer with a dream, patented some cockamamie plan for the first ever self-service grocery store (full of weird things like turnstiles, baskets, and aisles). In 1916, he carried out the plan at his flagship Piggly Wiggly store in Memphis -- followed by 2,500 more self-serve stores in the next 15 years. His next big idea was a fully automated grocery store he called Keedoozie." U.S. Patent # 1,242,872 From Southwest Airline's Spirit Magazine, 2/2006
So, while some of the merchandising techniques we're always talking about like the Decompression Zone, Speed Bumps, Power Walls and Merchandise Outlets aren't anything new, they are tried and true favorites -- and with good reason: they work! If you'd like to know more, we have several articles on store planning and visual merchandising on our website: http://www.kizerandbender.com
M&M's World in Orlando, Florida was just announced as the 2006 Store of the Year in the 36th annual Institute of Store Planners/VM+SD International Store Design Competition. First Place Winners include Bloomingdale's, San Francisco; Barney's New York, Boston; Brown Thomas & Co., Dublin, Ireland; Fornarina, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Motorola RED, Chicago; Fornarina, London; Bass Pro Shop, Denver; and Olay Brand Experience Counter, Cincinnati.
Click here to see all the winning stores:
http://www.visualstore.com:80/index.php/channel/11/id/11430
These stores are so incredible, we think you just might be inspired to make a few changes of your own!
