The Hindu Business Line : Visual merchandising sees big spend

Visual merchandising is no longer about mannequin dressing, nor is it about colourful posters on the wall. As companies strive to convert brand thinking into retail thinking, point of sale promotion is getting a bigger slice of the promotion pie.

Mr Prathish Nair, Head, Marketing, RAMMS India, a Bangalore-based retail consulting company, says that visual merchandising (VM) is seeing some big spends this year. While large department stores are spending about Rs 30-40 lakh per season on VM, malls are spending close to Rs 15 lakh for every changeover that happens and this is at least four times a year.

Mr Nair says that regional celebrations are also assuming importance now. "Pongal in Chennai, Onam in Kerala, Diwali in the North and Christmas all over the country are makeover times for large stores and malls," says Mr Nair.

Mr Susil Dungarpur, Head-Retail at Prestige Group (which owns the Forum Mall), Bangalore, agrees that the VM spend has doubled this year, compared to the last couple of years. Earlier, retailers spent 1.5-2 per cent of their turnover on visual merchandising, and this figure has now touched four per cent.

Crowd puller

"As retail gets more competitive, VM is the only crowd puller within the mall," says Mr B.G. Uday, Managing Director, Garuda Mall, Bangalore. VM involves shopper research, creating an identity for the retailer and of course, creating a commercial to trigger the entire promotion process.

In fact, companies are now moving from brand thinking to retail thinking. "As purchase decisions are made at the store, design interventions are needed to attract more customers," says Mr Shantanu Saha, CEO of Idiom Design & Consulting Co, a retail design company.

Earlier, top-of-the-line budgets used to garner a huge chunk of the promotion budget (close to 80 per cent), but now retailers have flipped the entire allocation process with below-the-line promotion taking up 70 per cent of the share. The VM industry in the country is still largely unorganised like the retail sector. But rough estimates of the VM spend in the country gives a figure of Rs 200 crore, and growing `100 per cent every year'.