Customer Focused!
Not, as in the case of some shops.
Okay, so what is ‘Customer focused’, you ask? While the correct question is: What is not ‘Customer focused’ in relation to certain shops?
Fundamentally, that question was too long a title for this short yet sweet and informative article.
Put simply, it’s when shops, some charity shops, mostly, put out and display stock, clothes, women’s clothes, in a way that is helpful for them and their staff, while being time consuming for their customers.
By comparison, other retail outlets have more than one size of a garment and sometimes in more than one colour. As a consumer, myself, I have to, from time to time, buy clothes, since I can’t walk around naked in public; besides which, I would no doubt get a cold in winter when the temperature drops.
Those main retail outlets can display their stock in one of two ways. Either by design then colour and finally size within each. Or by size then design and colour:
The later display option makes it easy for someone to see what the store has in their size, thereby narrowing down the choice to what’s available rather than focus on something that takes, garners their interest, only to, when they check the labels, discover that the shop doesn’t have their size.
In cases where that has happened, the customer, rather than consider something else in their size, has left the shop, something I know from my own experience of customer service.
Furthermore, since different shop names sell different styles, designs and colours to one another, the departing customer has no other option but to choose something else if they actually want to buy an item of clothing.
Some charity shops, those that have no interest as far as I can see of ‘Customer focused’ displays, on the other hand, simply put the stock on the rails, without any form of organisation, and leave it to their customers to wade through as many as two to six rails of merchandise, I kid you not!
In this photo from a charity shop, I’ve placed a green line underneath the size cubes on the garment hangers and circled the one in the woman’s left hand.
Each coloured cube denotes a different size, which is helpful. What, though, of a charity shop that has the same coloured cubes for all the sizes and mixes them up as stated?
Among the six rails previously mentioned, all of them women’s tops, there is no order to the sizing, along with a lack of ‘stock control’.
Ah, yes, stock control! It’s something that falls into two areas. First, theft of stock and second, controlling the stock that is put out on display. We all like to be able to look at an item we are considering buying. Shops that employ the second form of stock control will, as I know from employing ‘stock control’ only to later discover I had introduced ‘Managing products and services’ long before the phrase, term was thought of, have a surplus of stock in the back storeroom. Someone in the shop will, as I did, replace the stock that was sold each day, where said stock is in the storeroom. Charity shops, on the other hand, do not have that luxury. That said, what they do have is common sense, only some of them fail to use it, thereby forwarding all sorted stock and, more to the point, overfilling one or more rails while failing to balance the stock on the rails; maintain the same amount of hanging garments (hangers) on each rail and not, therefore, overfilling them, thereby making it hard for customers to look at a garment.
So, there you have it. Short, yes, and very much to the point, how shops should display their clothes stock and in a way that is both ‘Customer focused’ and, above all else, ‘Customer friendly’.
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