Who’s ready for cold weather, family gatherings and lots of merchandising research? That’s right, you are. Fall is just a few weeks away and that means it’s time for us merchandisers to get to work. When the holiday season comes around, everyone here at POP Fuel knows the drill and they always seem to have lots of advice to prep for the 4th quarter rush. So, to help that information makes its way to our favorite readers, we’re introducing the Holiday Merchandising Prep Pro Tip Series.
To get things started, we’d like to share one our favorite sources of inspiration.
Pro Tip 1. Follow FixturesCloseUp® for Inspiration and Solutions
Keeping up with the latest trends AND the freshest ideas in the point-of-purchase industry can be very time consuming. That’s why we like to explore FixturesCloseUp® when we need a bit of merchandising inspiration. This site is a treasure trove of display possibilities, featuring store and POP fixture reviews as well as photos in a searchable idea database for outfitting retail.
According to curator, Tony Kadysewski, a 15-year veteran of retail fixtures, “the blog is a pictorial inventory of unique or otherwise interesting small-scale fixtures seen across the entire range of retailing.” Although following the blog in linear fashion is a great way to keep up with real-time retail and POP trends, the site provides much more value than meets the eye.
Its extremely organized structure has resulted in a natural, database-like plethora of store and point-of-purchase ideas and solutions. We suggest you take some time to explore the site’s navigation features to really leverage it as a research tool. When you’re ready to start your research, try browsing by categories at first. You’ll find category options such as ‘Display Hooks’, ‘Shelf Edge Fixtures’ and ‘Label and Sign Holders’.
After diving into a category, you’ll find a series of photo rich articles featuring similar products. From there, you can refine your selection of blog posts by clicking on tags at the top of each article. These tags are based on different channels of retail such as Apparel, General Merchandise, Grocery and POP to help you get to relevant ideas and solutions.
You can also research store fixtures methodically via intensely organized index pages or visually via the FixturesUpClose® Pinterest board. We suggest using specific keywords to get started in either area. Then you can browse around until you find the right inspiration for your holiday point-of-purchase displays.
Happy merchandising!
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