This month I share my top Christmas tips For creating effective window display’s and visual merchandising. 

Creating theatre and atmosphere within your Christmas shop will always help to engage your customer and create that Christmas experience all shoppers are looking for.

Take inspiration from some of London’s top department stores, who create magical theatre within their displays by using lighting, graphics and props.

Create a strong theme which your customer can follow/ engage with throughout their journey within your store, consider incorporating your theme consistently within your POS, windows, in store displays and digital content.

Create height and visual impact with your displays by using Christmas themed props, textures and innovatively hanging merchandise. Liberty London is a great example of a store who implement this effectively every year within their atrium space. Try using the key VM principles of symmetrical, asymmetrical, repetition, or alternation compositions to create an eye-catching impact. Using props such as coloured hat boxes, which can be tied with ribbon or wrapping up empty packaging – make great ways to create height within displays as well as adding that Christmas theatre.

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For September’s blog post I wanted to share with you some of the highlights from this year’s Visual Merchandising Summer school, which I taught for The University of the Arts London – as part of their UAL Short Courses program 🤩

It was great to be back teaching at Central St Martins in Kings Cross Granary Square. The UAL short Visual Merchandising Courses featured a mix of theory and practical carried out in the classroom, as well as two days of retail visits for the students to see the Visual Merchandising techniques in practice.
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This month I have had the pleasure of teaching a bespoke Visual Merchandising workshop for the Retail team at Ludlow Farmshop. They are in the process of opening up their new Gift Shop this Summer and required Visual Merchandising training prior to opening to support their team with merchandising and store layout techniques.

Creating an effective store layout is important to gain an improvement to your customer flow throughout your store and also create a more pleasurable, harmonious shopping experience for your customers. I wanted to share with you my top tips and techniques to being able to achieve a more effective store layout. Please click on the full blog article to find out more….

So grateful to have spent the day with Aso Lam and Mavis Chan who were visiting London from the Hong Kong Design Institute.

Aso and Mavis booked a Visual Merchandising Retail Safari with me, which included in person Visual Merchandising training in King’s Cross, then we spent the rest of the day visiting London’s best retail experiences. We started visiting the retailers in Coals Drop Yard, then travelled by tube to Harrods to look at the Prada Pop Up Space which is exclusive to Harrods dedicated to selection of women’s ready to wear, bags, shoes and accessories. We also got a selfie with the Harrods Bear at the Pop Up Concierge Space.

This past week I have been teaching the weekly Visual Merchandising Short Course for The London College of Fashion, at their new campus in Stratford, East London. This course was part of the University of the Arts Short Course program running during the Spring break.
The short course focused upon an introduction into Window Dressing and Visual Merchandising. Where we explored current consumer trends within the retail industry and how retailers are creating the ultimate retail experience.

This month I am back at The University of West London in Ealing to teach the 8 week Visual Merchandising module to the students enrolled on the Level 5 Fashion Branding & Visual Merchandising Course.
As part of the 8 week module we will be focusing upon an introduction in to the Visual Merchandising industry and looking at current consumer trends & behaviours within the retail industry.
The two part assessment is focused upon the students designing their own pop up shop for the Selfridges Corner Shop space.
Students will be designing the Oxford and Duke Street window spaces. Then focusing upon designing their in store floor space and creating VM planograms to assist with practical installation.
My theory classes are complimented by Photoshop lessons, which will assist the students in gaining further knowledge of using the design program which they will be using to design their assessment drawings.

It was important for us to visit the Corner Shop at Selfridges in person, to assist students with the understanding of the space and how this is used to create an experimental space for the customer.

For my first blog post of 2024, I am excited to have been asked to teach the Visual Merchandising Module with fellow Lecturer and VM Specialist, Sarah Bailey at Conde Nast College in London.

It was great to meet the students last week at our first lesson together and I look forward to teaching them again in February. My lectures are focusing around the importance of applying the key Visual Merchandising principles both in store and via digital channels. Exploring new technologies which are assisting our customers to have the ultimate multi sensory experience in store and through interactive window displays.