Perennial Merchandising 101

Merchandising is a practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer. At a retail in-store level, merchandising refers to the variety of products available for sale and the display of those products in such a way that it stimulates interest and entices customers to make a purchase. Below are the merchandising practices that we follow.

Organize by price points and variety of plant-

  1. Group alike price points together
  2. Group alike varieties together within one price point

Organize by height-

  1. Arranging plants according to their height, shortest plants first on the table
  2. Organize short to tall, “line of sight”

Organize by color striping-

  1. Vertically stripe in a row alike variety on table
  2. Use colors and textures from blooms or foliage to catch the eye of our Meijer guest

Endcap merchandising-

  1. Prime selling space, always full and colorful
  2. Try to keep one to two price points on an endcap
  3. Endcaps should only have 1 or 2 varieties displayed at a time
  4. Horizontally striped
  5. Rotate endcap items weekly

Signs/Tags-

  1. Make sure all tables and endcaps are signed with correct sign
  2. All signs left justified, every 8ft on the table
  3. Mae sure all plant ID tags on the side of the pots are facing out towards the customer

Plant Care-

  1. Meijer team will water daily by hand and overhead sprinklers
  2. Meijer team will cover our product with frost cloth during cold temps

Condensing- As product sells, we condense it down between shipments

Culls/Markdowns-

  1. Keep only fresh, top quality plants on the tables always
  2. Remove all marginal product off the tables
  3. Keep track of all cull items and enter all items into VIM inventory system
  4. Determine if the product gets a clearance sticker or if it gets tossed
  5. Place selected clearance items in designated clearance area
  6. Place selected toss items behind garden center for Meijer team to scan out

Endcap Merchandising-                                                               

  1. Typically, one variety and size of plant per shelf, horizontally striped
  2. Great endcap items would be-
    1. Anything in full bloom color that you have a lot of
    2. Anything on sale or will be on sale soon
    3. Bigger potted items and containers

Here are a few example pictures below on how we merchandise depending on the time of season-

March/April Merchandising- It can be a little cold still and so we stay off top shelf for easy frost cloth coverage-

May Merchandising- If needed turn trays 2 pots facing out, utilize whole garden center-

June/July Merchandising- Organize by SKU variety, Stripe of color, Sticker price, Line of Sight, Size of pot-

In Season condensing- Leave little spaces bewteen each item right before your new shipment arrives-

Endcaps- 1 price point, horizontally striped, 1-2 different varieties or sale items-

Here is a merchandising checklist that might help when going into the store to merchandise each time-

  1. Perennial Tables-
    1. Product vertically striped by variety/price point
    2. Each price point has sign left justified, every 8ft
    3. All product is watered
  2. Perennial Table Endcaps-
    1. Product horizontally striped. 1 price point per shelf
    2. One sign per endcap- Left Justified
  3. Tree and Shrub Pits-
    1. Product color blocked by variety
    2. 1 gallon size 1st transitioning into 2 gallon size next
    3. All product is watered and signed
  4. Sawyer Product Culls & Clearance
    1. Clearance items in designated clearance area
    2. Clearance items have orange sticker over bar code
    1. Clearance product is signed with orange clearance sign
    2. All toss items loaded on cart/informed Meijer team
    3. All culled items entered into VIM system
  5. CC Racks-
    1. All racks cleaned/pushed to the back of GC
    2. All rack counts entered into VIM