The typical mall retailer - how much printing do they go through?

November 14, 2007 10:54 AM

How many printed materials (signs, posters, etc.) are used in a retail environment in a typical week/month/etc.?

Trying to figure out a ballpark estimate of how many different printed marketing materials are used for in-store merchandising over the course of a year. This includes:

* Posters on the walls
* Placards on top of clothing racks
* Signs that sit on various surfaces throughout the store (checkout counters, desks, etc.)
* Endcap signs, small posters, etc.

... basically, any printed material that would change according to the mother company's marketing campaign.

I know that retailers usually have a marketing plan sent down from on high - I've often seen mall store workers referencing a big binder which tells them which signs to change out on which day.

So, can anyone with present or previous retail management experience give me an idea of how many different printed materials are in a typical-sized mall shop, on average, how often they're changed out, how often new printed marketing materials arrive from the mothership, etc.? Any other hidden costs related to in-store marketing that I'm not seeing? (i.e. how often does the mother organization send too many posters, most of which get thrown away?) Also, how many man-hours are typically spent in a given week on swapping out the marketing materials?

(For the purposes of this mental exercise, I'm not talking about the huge stores like Sears, which have their own economy of scale. I'm thinking of stores along the size of a Lane Bryant or Anne Taylor, stores in which the front-line retail employees are also generally responsible for the merchandising plan within the store.)

posted by jbickers to work & money (2 comments total)

It would be extremely rare that the mothership sent too many materials. All chains follow a set planogram. And those systems include x-number of signage items. It's all planned down to the square-foot and dictated to the individual stores by the mothership.

As for how many pieces...it's really impossible to generalize, due to the wide differences in design approaches.

Plus, you usually have overlapping programs within the same store. You might, perhaps, have the "Fall" seasonal store package...usually the larger wall graphics and other items that state the seasonal look. These would stay up for up to a couple of months.
Then, you might have a secondary layer of weekly promotional pieces scattered through the store. It just really depends.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:10 AM on November 14, 2007

I was a manager for Pier 1 Imports for seven years (93-2000). Like Thorzdad says there were usually overlapping campaigns. But in general P1 had sales that would focus on one area like bedroom furniture, or dining tables with a few extra items thrown in. This would generally run for about three weeks. Each month we would get several packets of materials that were geared for the size of our store-

Sale Price info
200-300 preprinted hanging tags that would go on each piece of larger merchandise. There were always too few of somethings and too many of another, but by the end we would have cycled through most of them.

100-200 Sheld Talker signage- these are the little plastic signs that attach to shelving for smaller sale items. We usually ended up throwing some of these away, but not too many.

Posters- 15-20. These were for floor fixtures that were put near sales displays. We always had fewer stands than we did posters. I would guess half or 2/3 got used.

Large Signage
Window posters- We had giant signs that went into the windows. These were seasonal and/or announced sales. I would guess 4-5 per store. Some signs might be used longer than 1 sale cycle if they were seasonal.

Hanging signs- smaller cardboard (20 x30 ish) that hung from the ceiling down main aisles . 10 -15 (these were usually graphic in nature and might stay longer than one cycle)

So about every three weeks there was a major signage blitz that took about 2 hours in the morning depending if there was a break between sales (taking down and putting up vs just putting up).

Then there was the baseline signage that would get forced to us when regular prices changed (hang tags, shelf talkers) Lets say 30-50 pieces a month.

And every shipment also came with price signage- 100-150 pieces on average bi weekly.

I think thats the majority. P1 was just starting to use in store circulars in the last years I was there. I bet we got about 300-500 for each sale cycle, and always ran out.
posted by kimdog at 11:48 AM on November 14, 2007 [1 favorite]