An Image Shelf Strip is NOT a Long Shelf Tag

Gladson’s Image Merchandising Solutions group has the honor to attend many new store sets, remodels and category reset events.

More and more organizations agree that putting a product image on a shelf strip or tag has significant, positive impact on labor and out-of-stock. Temporary strips for reset purposes or permanent strips for shelf maintenance and planogram compliance also ensure reorder and re-stocking proficiencies for immediate and very substantial labor and time ROI. These tools take the merchandising “suggestion” represented by the POG and turn that into a precision merchandising weapon.

However, effective Image Shelf Strips are not simply long shelf tags with product pictures. This precision merchandising weapon requires many components including, but not limited to:

• Accurate product information
• Expertise in POG construction and the tricks and shortcuts that the space management experts and software allow
• The interpretation of the paper and digital POG to the reality of the shelf
• The actual in-store layout of the shelf
• The construction, kitting and distribution of the strips themselves.

We recently attended a shelf reset with a major grocer. They are toying with the idea of using permanent image strips, and we had talked with them about our expertise in all of the areas required to produce a successful Image Strip Program. They assured us that their data quality, POG construction, store condition knowledge and store merchandising expertise were second to none. We could simply act as a strip provider . . . in effect producing a long shelf tag with images. They had their view of how they wanted to conduct the test with some guidance supplied from their current “tag” provider who had told them that a “strip is just a long tag …with images.”

We printed the strips directly from their planogram. When we arrived at the store, we found that the existing POG and actual shelf sections were in the wrong direction for the strips. We pioneered duplex image strips (with mirrored POG on the back side of each strip) years ago, for just such a situation.

More recently we have developed a web-based store mapping tool (Gladson eMap) to help retailers gather actual, vital in-store information that can be catalogued and put into a database. We recommend the eMap approach rather than duplex strips, to fill the gap in retailer operational intelligence in a dynamic fashion (always updated for latest conditions).

The strips generated from this grocer’s planograms had two other significant errors.

1. The retailer’s product dimensions were incorrect. Image shelf strips depend on accurate product dimensions to mark the POG product position on each shelf. When those dimensions are flawed, the product stocked on the shelf will not align with the markings and the image location. Merchandisers spend time reconfiguring product and facings to try and fill the voids between products or allow for products that are wider than the allotted space on the strip.
2. The planogram was a bit more insidious although more easily fixed. Category management software is quite powerful and, as such, quite flexible. Software users have a great deal of freedom to creatively manipulate the product information. This flexibility can lead to many adaptations that often lead to a pretty, but technically flawed, planogram. This will not matter a great deal when the output of the POG is a picture that will be used as a guide or “suggestion” for the merchandising team. However, when used to print Image Shelf Solutions, planograms need to be precise, exact, consistent and done within the actual rules of the software - shortcuts, squeezing or other tricks that many analysts may use in their day-to-day work must be cleaned up. Gladson’s process dynamically corrects common POG practitioner “tricks” so that the strips will reflect a technically perfect POG, regardless of the input.

Kitting and store practices were also involved in this program. The grocer wanted us to send out perforated sheets of strips rather than sending out pre-separated strips banded in order and by POG segment. They insisted that their current “tag” provider indicated sheets of strips to be the most efficient manner of delivery. Efficient for whom, we asked? Years of careful time studies have indicated that having to separate the strips in store (and often repair strips torn in the process), adds more than ten cents per strip in labor costs to the set!

Finally, while we were in the store getting ready for the set, the team began by tearing down the entire section for a clean and clear set. We stopped them and counseled them that with Gladson’s Image Merchandising Solutions they could take a much less invasive approach and leave the section open to shoppers. Our experience with thousands of store sets using appropriate image reset and permanent strips has yielded many in-store process components that add to the labor savings and minimize disruption, experience and expertise their “tag” supplier could not supply.

Are you interested in learning more about why an Image Shelf Strip is NOT a long shelf tag and why you should care? Contact us at salesteam@gladson.com

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