Planning Retail Business

Great customer service isn’t just confined to what happens on the shop floor; it begins with the location, format, and layout of your store. If your store is in the wrong location, or doesn’t meet the specific needs of consumers then all the customer service in the world can’t make your retail endeavour a success.

Here at Retail Vision we provide our clients with a complete retail store planning service. Once we understand what your aims and objectives are then we can set to work, planning an effective store concept and retail store layout that will work for you.

There are six key areas of retail store planning that need to be considered:

1. Store Format – An effective store format provides the basis for delivering your products to the right type of customer. Using the store format as a starting point allows you to build your retail plan and put processes in place accordingly. Retail Vision has the knowledge and expertise to help you match your store format, size, and location to your core customer.
2. Site Selection – The best location for your store is one close to where your customers live or work, or one which is easy to travel to by car or public transport. At Retail Vision we have the tools and skills to develop site criteria for you, and help you to find the ideal site for your store.
3. Site & Building Planning – Once you’ve selected the ideal site for your store, we can help you to make the best use of the site in terms of access, car parks, traffic flow, and the size of the building in relation to the site. We’ll help you work out how big the stockroom needs to be in relation to the sales floor, as well as where to position the service, office, and staff areas.
4. Space Allocation – Certain product categories will perform better than others, and correct space allocation can add 15% to your sales and profits. It’s important to identify your best performers and work out how much space to allocate to each department. For example if you are a supermarket, how much space will you allocate to non-food, household items, and fresh food?
5. Store Layouts – In order to determine your retail store layouts you need to get inside the heads of your customers and identify their decision-making hierarchy. How does your customer move around the store and decide which product to purchase? Each category should be placed in its ideal position, with related categories adjacent to it.

Store Concepts – Once you have decided on your store format, layout, and space allocation the experts at Retail Vision can provide you with a complete store concept, including all the latest design ideas and fixtures.

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