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area
Area
Visual
Merchandising
By Preksha Sharma
Have you ever visited a mall with no plans
to shop but returned with an armload of
shopping bags? Have you ever felt compelled
to buy something? Do you make impulsive
purchases, and feel guilty about them? Here
is a fact to ease the guilt: it may not entirely
be on you. Stores can appear tempting
to us because products are displayed so
attractively that they influence our buying
decision. There is an entire discipline of retail
and design dedicated to the study of this
influence, called Visual Merchandising (VM).
Simply put, VM is the effective
presentation of products that impact purchase.
The environment in which these products are
kept also plays an instrumental role in creating
the impact; and so everything that a customer
sees at a store becomes a part of the store’s
VM. These include the store exteriors (window
display, façade, retail premises) which attract
a customer and influence store selection,
and interiors (merchandising, point-of-sales,
and architectural display) which can help in
lowering a customer's psychological defence
against making a purchase.
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Surender Gnanaolivu,
consultant in retail
experience strategy
and development
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Anuraag Singhal, head VM at Allen Solly
VM in India
In India, VM has come a long way since the
advent of organised retail. Anuraag Singhal,
visual merchandising head at Allen Solly, tells
us about the changes he has witnessed in the
industry since he became a part of it in the
mid 90s, “Initially VM was all about direction
signage, arranging merchandise size-wise,
and colour blocking. Then the past decade
saw strong emphasis on window displays,
propping, visuals, etc. Today I see that the
windows are more styled and concept-based;
they have a story.” Singhal has co-authored a
book, Visual Merchandising, published by Tata
McGraw Hill (2007), which is a part of the
curriculum in leading institutes across the
country.
Steady growth of organised retail led to
evolution in the roles of visual merchandisers
in the industry. Singhal credits the departmental
store concept, and pioneers such as Shopper’s
Stop for bringing this discipline to India in an
organised manner. “The shop-in-shop concept
gave each brand an exclusive space within a
store. And with the success of this concept,
brands started having standalone stores.
Organised retail entered the industry through
the departmental stores. Earlier, even brands
were operating in an unorganised manner,”
he says.
Changes in government policies around
the same time (early 90s) opened the gates
for foreign brands to open stores in Indian
markets, catalysing the evolution of VM in the
country. Surender Gnanaolivu, a consultant in
retail experience strategy and development,
and one of the pioneers of the industry, notes
that the arrival of international brands into
Indian markets pushed homegrown brands
to raise their VM standards. This is true even
today as VM concepts for most international
luxury brands are planned at their head
offices offshore.
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area
Area
Functioning in India
The country is witnessing a whopping growth
rate in the retail sector, but organised retail
trade accounts for less than 15 percent of the
total retail trade. (In developed countries,
this figure is nearly 80 percent.) Visual
merchandising as a discipline lies within
the scope of organised retail. Today, VM is an
important aspect of retail in all homegrown
brands, and is formally taught at various
institutes in the country.
As a discipline, VM demands a mix of
creativity and business understanding.
Dr Tarun Panwar, who is the vice-president
(International Relations and Special Projects)
at Pearl Academy, New Delhi, explained in a
career talk show, aired on DD Loksabha,
“If you have an adequate amount of aesthetic
appreciation and you can blend it with
business acumen, you could be a great visual
merchandiser.” Elaborating further, Dr Panwar
said that VM is an interdisciplinary program
where basic knowledge of design, business,
consumer behaviour and psychology are
important. “You have to understand creative
aspects like colour, texture and space
management. On the other hand, you need to
understand the commercial aspects of space
productivity: whether I am getting enough
returns for the space for which I am paying
the rent,” he says.
A visual merchandiser has to develop a
retail space strategically, aligning it with the
retail agenda, marketing communication, and
brand goals. Based on these, the VM stories
and concepts are designed, and executed
at the store level. The ultimate goal is to
convince the customer to make a purchase.
As an essential function of retail, most brands
with an offline presence have an in-house
VM team. Yet, VM projects are often outsourced
to independent firms and freelancers. Krati
Sharma, a freelance visual merchandiser, gives
us an insight into the nature of the projects
that are outsourced, “It may at times be the
repetitive work or the creative conceptualisation
part that the brands may outsource, depending
on the capabilities of their own teams. There
are a lot of clients looking for end-to-end,
concept-to-execution services as well, but
these are mostly smaller startup brands that
do not have their own in-house team.” Sharma
has worked with leading apparel brands such
as Levi Strauss and Van Heusen for over seven
years and has recently ventured into freelance.
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1,2,3 & 4: Visual merchandising work by Liganova
India for various brands
Liganova India is the local arm of the
German company with the same name, which
provides retail solution. Siddhant Sahu, visual
marketing, explains that one of the main
reasons for a brand to outsource their VM
work is shortage of manpower. Unlike Western
countries, the ratio of VM team members to the
stores they handle is quite skewed in India.
“Let’s take a brand X that has 200 stores. To
handle the concept and execution of these 200
stores, the brand will have, say, three people in
the head office and they might have one or
two people in the field.This is the scenario today.
There are a few companies which have 700
stores with only seven or eight people in the
VM team,” says Sahu.
Multi Brand Outlets (MBOs) such as
Shopper’s Stop put special emphasis on their
VM, as it is one of the most important tools for
attracting customers. Arden J. D’souza, who
is customer care associate and head of visual
merchandising at Shopper’s Stop, says that
since the brand has stores across the country,
a local dependency is necessary for execution
of concepts, but the conceptualisation is
always done by the in-house VM teams. In
proportion to an MBO, a brand spends
considerably larger amounts on marketing
activities such as print ads, television
commercials, etc. These are to build a brand;
most of the merchandise sales of a brand are
actually made through MBOs.
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Exclusive Brand Outlets (EBOs) focus on
the experience of the customer inside the
store. The VM at an EBO must be in sync with
brand promises on other media platforms.
In the autumn-winter season of 2013, Allen
Solly launched the third part of its Colour
Lab theme, in which a customer could pick
any colour from a display wall of swatches,
sleeve mocks, or even an iPad. A selected
garment would be dyed in the exact same
colour. This campaign was heavily marketed
by the brand, and simultaneously the season’s
VM was designed around the same concept.
“If a consumer reads about Colour Lab in
a newspaper, he should get the same idea
and feeling in the store as well,” says Richa
Shrivastava, visual merchandiser (creative)
at Allen Solly.
Yet, there are only a few brands which
lay such emphasis on synchronising the
personality of their VM with other
communications. VM is often perceived to
be only about window displays, without
much thought to the store environment,
the brand, or the product, which can make
a customer feel disconnected. Gnanaolivu,
who has decades of experience in the
industry says, “In the local brands today,
we see better reference points, visually; the
quality of VM is better. But if you actually
look at the ability of visual merchandisers
to understand business and interpret VM
into the business objectives, I still feel that
there is a long way to go. Nowadays with
graphics, media, lighting, etc. it is easier to
create an impact, but whether it will help
in achieving sales, we can’t say. Some of the
larger brands do have a strategic approach
to VM, but many others are just tactical.”
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There is no standard formula for visual
merchandising; it depends on factors such
as product, scale, brand goals, etc. To gain a
more nuanced understanding, we delved a
little deeper into the functioning of the VM
department of apparel brand Allen Solly from
Madura Fashion and Lifestyle, a division of
Aditya Birla Nuvo. Allen Solly was launched in
India in 1993. (CRISIL Research estimates that
in 2012, branded apparels – defined as brands
having a strong national or regional presence –
constituted about 40 percent of the domestic
apparel market. It is also one of the most
dynamic spaces for visual merchandising.)
Allen Solly has two seasons: Spring –
Summer and Autumn–Winter, in addition to
which there are End of Season Sale intervals.
Each season has three displays which are
changed at an interval of 40–45 days. The
VM team at Allen Solly is headed by Anuraag
Singhal; the creative aspects of the VM are
taken care of by Richa Shrivastava. Along
with them, there are four regional visual
merchandisers and experts on Multi Brand
Outlet VM.
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Process: A brand is created with a clear image
of the target customer in mind. At Allen Solly,
this ideal customer has been visualised as a
persona – a manifestation of an ideal Allen Solly
customer. This persona is given a name and
personality like a real person. Understanding
the persona becomes pivotal in making all
customer-related decisions, ranging from
designing to operations.
The persona becomes our
reference point for studying
the customer’s personality,
since [at the] end of the day
we all focus on the same
direction. That’s how you
start reading into consumer
psychology and understand
who visits your store.
– Richa Shrivastava, VM
(creative), Allen solly
First, the range for a season is designed by
fashion designers and presented at an internal
trade show, where the buying team (from the
brand, the franchises, and Multi Brand Outlets)
books orders for the coming season. This is
where VM first comes into the picture, says
Shrivastava. “We bring in the essence of how
Allen Solly stores would look in the near future
with the respective merchandise story,” she adds.
After the trade show bookings, a calendar for
the season is prepared, focusing on marketing
campaigns and window displays. The VM team
receives a brief about the merchandise stories
that need to be highlighted. The time frame
is usually seven to eight weeks to launch
the window displays of the season, and the
team works on their design, prototype and
implementation in all stores.
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5
5 & 6: Monkey Business: Window display created
by Mumbai-based street artist Tyler for luxury
home decor store, Splendour.
This is the fourth chapter of Splendour’s series of
artistic interventions
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Challenges that VM faces in India
Like any emerging space, VM has expanding
opportunities but also testing challenges.
One of the major challenges that most
industry professionals face is the availability
and quality of vendors. Working with the vendor
base, Sahu says, is the biggest nightmare. In
Germany, Liganova has its own production unit.
The quality of work and level of professionalism
are far superior when compared to the Indian
market, he says. Interestingly, Sahu dismisses
the common perception that the cost of
production in European countries is unaffordable
for Indian markets. “If I compare my data of the
international with the Indian market, we are
charging clients close to 70–80 percent of what
European markets are charging,” he says.
The major reasons that industry seniors cite
for the incompetency of the vendors are: lack
of technology, limited innovation, uneducated
and unskilled labour, and limited material
exploration. “The vendors are not organised,
they have communication problems and
quality issues. There are a few good vendors,
but none who provide a one-stop-solution to
all VM problems. And that is where India is
lacking. There are no vocational courses, no
support to vendors and their systems in the
country,” says Singhal. Another area that needs
immediate attention is the shortage of reliable
organisations that provide intellectual and
analytical services such as trend analysis, brand
audits, benchmarking and competitor analysis.
Furniture designer Thierry Betancourt has
designed the retail windows at the luxury home
décor store Splendour in Mumbai. Though
the luxury segment does not work with the
same constraints as mass retail segments,
Betancourt’s experience with the vendor base
in the country gives us a different perspective.
“For one of the first window displays that we
made, we went with expert set designers who
make sets for Bollywood movies, events, etc.
They were extremely professional and highly
skilled. It really took them only two days, which
is record timing,” he says. Save that one ideal
scenario, he says that getting work done is
more about communicating with the labour in a
way they understand. “Some vendors are good,
for them it is new and they are excited to do
something out of their routine normal work.
Usually they work with a lot of flexibility, which
is quite nice. I think in India people are quite
flexible in the way they work. Especially in this
city where there are no professional window
display teams, you have to build everything
from scratch and you have to spend a lot of
time and effort on it.”
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9
Education and future
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7: Tema e Variazioni: Window
display at Splendour to pay
tribute to Italian artist Piero
Fornasetti. This is the third
chapter of Splendour’s series of
artistic interventions, and was
created in collaboration with
Thierry Betancourt and Suhani
Parekh
8, 9 & 10: Visual merchandising
work by Liganova India for various
brands
The exposure to VM, in the industry and
in education, has increased tremendously.
Today VM is taught at various institutes
as a core subject in design, retail and
fashion communication courses. But delve
a little deeper and the concerns of industry
professionals begin to surface.
Singhal feels that the education system in
the country is not upgrading itself with the pace
of the industry. “Even today, students study
the basics that I studied in ‘94. Consequently,
I keep seeing that they are doing the same
stuff that I was doing 20 years back,” he says.
Because of this, he feels, the growth of VM
has decelerated. A dynamic discipline like
VM can be understood only through constant
exposure to the industry. It is therefore
essential for educational institutes to involve
senior professionals and vice versa.
Divya Krishna, an assistant professor at
the National Institute of Fashion Technology,
Bangalore says, “What we majorly miss is the
practical application that covers budgeting,
working on the costing and material. It is
the biggest challenge in VM today.” Krishna
has recently ventured into academics; she
has worked as a visual merchandiser at
Louis Philippe, another brand from Madura
Fashion and Lifestyle. In premium colleges
such as National Institute of Fashion
Technology and Pearl Academy, there are
courses in fashion communication or luxury
brand management, wherein VM forms
an integral part and is one of the popular
career choices for a student; and with the
increasing number of courses and institutes,
the number of young graduates with VM as
their choice of career is going to increase
exponentially in future.
On the other hand, looking at small VM
teams even at leading brands compels us to
ponder whether the market is ready to absorb
the rising number of graduates with every
passing year. Krishna tries to explain, “I feel
there are enough vacancies, but also there is
no course with a clear focus on VM or retail.
The freshers are at an amateur stage, because
of which even the industry is not able to
justify them wholeheartedly. Because of
this we feel that either there is a scarcity of
opportunities or somewhere possibly the new
talent is not fitting in.”
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Richa Shrivastava of Allen Solly, points
out that only a handful of visual merchandisers have elevated to decision-making roles
in the industry. From an ambitious young
graduate’s perspective, this scenario does not
make VM the most attractive career choice. It
becomes a chicken-and-egg situation, where
not many talented youngsters take up the
field willingly as they see only a few seniors
in leading roles, and seniors are not able
to outgrow their roles and rise higher. It is
important to note that a visual merchandiser’s responsibilities demand a deeper
understanding of business in addition to
being creative. Visual merchandisers often
find themselves as subordinates to the retail
department in the organisational hierarchy.
“I feel that in India, VM has stalled. I am
enjoying my job, but what is the future? You
have to ask yourself, ‘if you do not hold an
MBA degree, what is the possibility of growing
in the industry especially if you are in a
creative role?’,” says Shrivastava.
Industry veteran Gnanaolivu agrees
with Shrivastava’s observation that in India,
visual merchandisers who have risen to
strategic roles in their organisations are
in minority. Visual merchandisers have to
wait for a brief from their seniors in Buying
and Merchandising, and are not involved
in the initial discussions. “That is how the
system works today,” says Gnanaolivu. To rise
within the company, it is necessary to take
on responsibilities, he says and further adds
that, visual merchandisers have to understand
margins, store development, selling techniques,
and the pain of having adequate stock. Foreign
markets with considerable experience in the
organised retail sector have empowered this
discipline as integral to business strategy and
are reaping the benefits. “In India, VM is seen
as one of the ways to communicate certain
campaigns. The whole approach towards VM
is that it is a support function rather than a
leading business function,” says Gnanaolivu.
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While a lot of home-grown brands lay
emphasis on visual merchandising, it is not
common to see brands consciously integrating
VM from the inception stage. From this
point of view, the country’s popular chain
of cafés, Cafe Coffee Day (CCD), has taken
a different route. For its recently launched
coffee chain The Square, CCD collaborated with
Bangalore-based Studio.J to develop its VM
identity. In the past, Studio.J has worked with
leading brands on projects related to visual
merchandising, but developing the VM identity
of a premium coffee chain format from scratch
was a new experience for the studio as well.
Director and Principal Design at Studio.J,
Jenny Andrews tells us, that the VM identity
of The Square has been created to represent
the serene landscape of the coffee plantation.
To bring out the feel of a coffee house, local
materials like naturally cut oak pieces from the
plantation have been used; a picture of the
plantation has been hand-painted on the wall
using acrylic paints. Other elements are also
well-thought and emphasised, for example, the
social initiatives of the organisation at their
plantation have been highlighted. Studio.J has
an in-house production unit where it produces
most of the props, etc. that have been used in
their VM projects.
Studio.J was founded in 2011, and along
with VM, it also specialises in retail design and
interior design services.
Top: Interiors of The Square, a premium coffee
chain format by Cafe Coffee Day
Bottom: Coffe cup mural at The Square created
by using coffee beans roasted at different levels