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Shelf maintenance — To pull one’s hair out or quite easy after all?

A quick swing into everyday life that illustrates how important your shelf care really is: Woman is in the shower in the morning and her favourite shampoo is empty. What now? For once, use her partner’s shampoo and on the way to work, quickly jump into the supermarket to get a refill. “Quick” is the magic word, because time is short in the morning.

It’s annoy­ing when the sham­poo can’t be found on the super­mar­ket shelf. The custo­mer does­n’t care if she hasn’t recei­ved the desi­red product because it hasn’t been reple­nis­hed, because it hasn’t been deli­vered at all or because it is perhaps only hidden at the back of the shelf. It is not there, which means that the decis­ion is either made for an alter­na­tive product or for the super­mar­ket. Losing a custo­mer because of poor product presen­ta­tion is extre­mely annoy­ing, both for the manu­fac­tu­rer and the retailer. Espe­ci­ally if it was really only because the product was actually there but not in the customer’s field of vision. What is not visi­ble cannot be bought. This means that no impulse purcha­ses take place either.

For the sake of your custo­mers — regu­lar shelf care ensu­res an over­view

The importance of good shelf main­ten­ance has not only been known since yester­day. But in many stores you still find untidy shel­ves. Who wants to spend hours in front of the sham­poo shelf looking for the desi­red variety? With the variety of products that compa­nies offer nowa­days, the custo­mer is quickly over­whel­med. Custo­mers who are loyal to the brand want to find the product quickly, and shop­pers who change brands also like a clear over­view and struc­tu­red shel­ves. Of course, brand manu­fac­tu­r­ers also have a duty here and must design good product pack­a­ging. The better the reco­gni­tion value and the more it stands out from other products, the faster people will find their desi­red product. But retail­ers cannot shirk respon­si­bi­lity and must ensure good orien­ta­tion on the shelf.

Struc­tu­red shelf main­ten­ance means too much effort?

For retail­ers, shelf main­ten­ance means a lot of work. Brin­ging goods forward every day, some­ti­mes even seve­ral times a day, requi­res a lot of person­nel and struc­tu­red manage­ment. This is a thorn in the side of retail­ers. Staff could invest this time much better in important things, such as advi­sing custo­mers. Espe­ci­ally in times of incre­asing online trade, the advan­tage of the statio­nary POS, a compre­hen­sive and custo­mer-orien­ted service on site as well as the imme­diate avai­la­bi­lity of products, should be brought into focus.

Shelf main­ten­ance can be so simple…

Why do many compa­nies still find shelf main­ten­ance so diffi­cult? There are alre­ady simple solu­ti­ons on the market that provide the perfect remedy. The prin­ci­ple of shelf main­ten­ance simply applied shows the exam­ple of the brand manu­fac­tu­rer Beiers­dorf toge­ther with POS TUNING. In various drugs­to­res, there was the well-known problem: the products were poorly visi­ble because they were partly at the back of the shelf or placed on the lower shel­ves. In addi­tion, the stabi­lity of some products was not opti­mal because they partly tipped over. With a special chan­nel system inclu­ding product feed, the problem was solved right away. The products were stable and the best thing was that from now on they were auto­ma­ti­cally pushed forward by the instal­led product feed. This plea­sed not only Beiers­dorf, but also the drugs­to­res.

And this is how shelf care ensu­res empty shel­ves

The sales result was also more convin­cing for all invol­ved if constant shelf main­ten­ance was guaran­teed. In four test markets, sales of Nivea hair care products were alre­ady up 23.6% after four months compared to the same period last year. So the roll-out was not long in coming. In the mean­time, 185 drugs­to­res in the hair care sector are alre­ady equip­ped with the POS TUNING System.

The POS Shelf Care System — Orien­ta­tion also for your employees

Why our prin­ci­ple of shelf main­ten­ance can also be easily adopted by your staff in their daily routi­nes: A label card with a picture of the product inten­ded for this place on the shelf has also been atta­ched to the goods feed. This picture only appears when the shelf is empty and the feed has reached the front­most place on the shelf. This way, the store employee knows right away which product is miss­ing and can imme­dia­tely see which sham­poo belongs in which place when putting it away. This can also have advan­ta­ges for the brand manu­fac­tu­rer, because the plano­gram and the shelf order will remain in place in the long term. And for the custo­mer who is looking for her sham­poo in the super­mar­ket, it is clear at that moment that the product is normally available here, but that the shelf is empty at the moment. Surely, at that moment, she first turns to the market staff and does not leave the market disap­poin­ted.