Merchandising Know-How: Product merchandising by color

When it comes to clothing, color is the first thing that attracts customers to the rack. Most people know what colors they look good in and what colors they like. In fact, we all have an emotional response to color and that has a definite influence on what we purchase. That’s why it is a good idea to group styles within categories by color. For example, hang all colors of fleece from one supplier in color groups rather than by size. If you are a risk taker, group your fleece from multiple suppliers by color. Give it a try. It will make it easier for your customers to shop and you might be surprised by customer reaction.



After all, if Yahoo! can do it so can you. In case you missed it, Yahoo! Shopping online allows shoppers to find products in the color they want by using a color palette of 56 different hues. The palette scans more than 10 million products in the Yahoo! Shopping catalog, including apparel, beauty, home and garden, and electronics categories. You want to look at sweaters in purple? No problem, click on the category and color and presto — they appear on screen.



When grouping colors on a rack, on shelves or in bins, use the ROY G. BV method to arrange them. The mythical “Roy” is just an easy way to remember that the colors should be arranged from right to left in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. Neutrals like white, tan and black should be hung or stacked with the lightest color on the left moving to the darkest color on the right.



Use color, too, to create seasonal excitement in the store. If Halloween is coming up, cross merchandise black and orange products and create a display up front in the store. If Valentine’s Day is looming, red and pink are the colors of choice for displays both in store and in the windows.



Colors are associated with emotions, seasons, holidays, special occasions and gender, among other things. Think about color when you plan signage, store interiors, displays and product merchandising. It’s a powerful tool that you can use to increase sales.

Sharon Leicham is the creator of The MerchandisingHUB, the author of “Merchandising Your Way to Success” and “How to Sell to Women” and is a regular columnist for SNEWS® writing on merchandising and marketing topics. You can access all of her columns by going to www.outsidebusinessjournal.com/merchandising, where you will find tons of information targeted at the needs of the independent specialty retailer. You can email us with questions and comments at merchandising@snewsnet.com.

For more retail training support and know-how, be sure to check out the SNEWS® Business 101 tools and stories, including our 10-part Retail Merchandising Training series produced by SNEWS®, including a useful online calculator for performing the most common retail merchandising calculations — free to All Access Subscribers.